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THE RECONCILIATION. 



WHO WAS TO BE RECONCILED? 

GOD OR MAN? OB GOD AND MAN? 



SOME CHAPTERS ON THE BIBLICAL VIEW OF 

THE ATONEMENT. 

\> \** BY 



P. WALDENSTROM. PH, D. 



PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY AND OF BIBLICAL HEBREW AND 
GREEK IN THE COLLEGE OF GEFLE, SWEDEN. 

TRANSLATED FROM THE SWEDISH, WITH SOME NOTES ADDED, 
AND AN INTRODUCTION, 

BY 



BY 

J. G. PRINCELL. 




CHICAGO: 

JOHN MARTENSON, Publisher? 
1888. 






Copyright, 1888. by John Martenson. 



OF C 



INTRODUCTION. 

Here is offered to the English reader a devotional, 
non-controversial, little book of the greatest importance 
both as regards Christian Biblical knowledge and as re- 
gards the influence of that knowledge on the mind and 
whole life of a believer in God and his Word. Facts and 
experience in the cases of thousands of readers have shown 
that the practical results of the Author's setting forth of 
God and his work in Christ as is done in this book have 
been these among others, to wit: — a clearer and more 
satisfactory apprehension of the whole subject in all its 
bearings, — a greater love of God, the Father, and of 
Christ, his beloved Son, the Redeemer, — more faith and 
interest in the Holy Scriptures, together with a wonderful 
opening of eyes and hearts to their truths, accompanied 
by a greater conformity to their teachings as well in regard 
to the Church as in regard to individuals, — a more sanc- 
tified and spiritual life under the more clearly recognized 
influence and guidance of the Holy Ghost, — a greater 
Christian activity in genuine revival work and general 
missionary effort for the cause and glory of Christ only. 
Thus these teachings have stood and stand the test, "By 
their fruits ye shall know them." 

Of the Author and his works some few simple notices 
are given in the Introduction to his treatise entitled 
"THE BLOOD OF JESUS," published in English si- 
multaneously with this, and in the "Announcements" at 
the end of the same, to which the reader is referred. 

Very likely many questions will rise in the minds of 
thoughtful readers, especially of such as have preconceived 
opinions concerning the subjects touched upon by the 
Author in this book, which opinions they may be loath to 
give up. The Author asks for his presentations only a 



4 INTRODUCTION. 

candid reading, and a judging of them simply according 
to the question which he has so solemnly propounded 
these many years and made to ring in the minds and 
hearts of the mass of Swedish Christians: "What is written 
in God's Word?" Let the Scriptures be searched as to 
whether these things be so! (Acts xvii. n). It is not 
expected that this little book will answer all questions 
that may be raised as to the subjects of which it treats; 
many important points are cleared up and treated more 
fully in other works of the Author, works that are referred 
to in the notes here and there, and that will be published, 
God willing, from time to time. 

For obvious reasons some quite copious foot-notes 
have been added by the undersigned; those not marked 
J. G. P. are by the Author. Also in the text everything 
within brackets has been added by the undersigned for 
the sake of (at least supposed) greater clearness in the 
bringing out of the thought in the original. The Bible 
quotations are from the Authorized Version unless other- 
wise distinctly stated. 

As the Author is thoroughly loyal to the Bible he 
finds in it nothing to deny and nothing to explain away; 
with him there is no denying of the full, absolute divinity 
of Christ, no belittling of sin or the punishment due to it, 
no questioning of the justice or wrath of God, — rather 
the reverse of all this: he lays greater stress on all these 
facts than do most of his opponents. He brings no pet 
theory to the Bible to be proved or defended by it; he 
simply asks: "Blessed Book, what dost thou teach?" And 
then he records the answer. Hence, he mentions and 
combats no theories by name — whether the moral, the 
vicarious, the governmental, or any other. If, dear reader, 
you must have a name for the Author's view, call it the 
Scriptural, or the Biblical, one, — the Bible View of the 
Atonement. 

Chicago, May, 1889. J. G. Princell. 



CHAPTER I. 

Necessity and Cause of the Reconciliation. 

i. "Therein is love, not that we loved God, but that he 
loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our 
sins" (i John iv. 10). The salvation which God has in 
Christ prepared for the world is in the Bible called some- 
times redemption, sometimes reconciliation, or propi- 
tiation. All those expressions, to save, to redeem, to 
reconcile, denote the same thing, seen from different sides.* 

* As there are at least three words used in English to ex- 
press the subject-matter of this treatise — to wit, atonement, 
reconciliation, and propitiation — and only one word is used in 
Swedish for all those three, that word being forsoning, from the 
German versohnen, (another word, forlika, to make alike, or to 
make to like, is often used as synonymous with fdrsona, but 
less frequently in religious literature), and also as there is in the 
English Authorized Version of the New Testament considerable 
irregularity in the translation of the Greek words in question, I 
will here, for the convenience of the reader and for the purpose 
of clearly stating at the outset the subject-matter of this treatise, 
cite all the words and passages of the N. T. referring to the 
subject which is variously called atonement, propitiation, recon- 
ciliation, and redemption. These four are Bible terms, but to 
them have been added in man's theology several terms to express, 
as supposed, either the same thing more fully or some other 
thing thought to be inherent in the Biblical terms. Such super- 
added theological terms are: expiation (and the verb, expiate), 
appease, render satisfaction to divine justice, vicarious sacrifice, 
substitution, and perhaps a few others of like import. Though 
these terms may be appropriate, and are, no doubt, properly 
used in various human relations and in reference to matters on 
merely human spheres, they are never used in the Bible to ex- 



6 THE RECONCILIATION. 

In other meditations we have already seen what the term 
"redemption" implies. This term is figurative. It sets 
forth salvation under the figure of a purchase, according 
to which a slave or prisoner is purchased or bought out of 
the bondage in which he is found. The term reconcilia- 
tion, however, sets forth the real essence of salvation. For 
salvation consists just in the reconciliation of man to God. 
Let us, therefore, now examine the Bible passages which 
set forth salvation as a reconciliation. May God graciously 
lead us in his light and truth. This subject is of extra- 



press any relation between God and man, never in reference to 
any thing on the strictly divine sphere — most of them do not 
occur in the Bible at all. The generic term, comprising all the 
Bible terms on the subject, is salvation (Greek soteria, from soter, 
deliverer, saviour, that from sozo, deliver, save, make or preserve 
safe, afford safety, make whole or sound, restore, from so- os, 
safe, sound). Of that term it is not necessary to say anything 
more special here. Of the four N. T. terms, atonement, propi- 
tiation, reconciliation, and redemption, the last one and its verb, 
redeem, are considered by our Author in a separate treatise, 
which soon will be published in English. Of the three other 
terms, atonement is used in the Eng. Auth. Ver. of the N". T. 
only once: to wit, in Rom. v. 11, where it is a translation of the 
Greek word which is everywhere else rendered reconciliation, 
and is thus rendered in the Revised Version also in Rom. v. 11. 
It is for this reason that I have translated the Swedish title of 
this treatise ("For sorting ens betydelse"), not thus: The Signifi- 
cance of the Atonement; but thus: The Reconciliation, its 
Significance, etc. In the N. T. are, therefore, really only two 
Greek words with their derivatives, just as in a true English 
translation there need be but two words and their derivatives (in 
the now accepted Swedish Version there is but one word with 
its derivatives) to express the whole idea of the subject here 
considered: to wit, man's salvation, or the means and acts of 
bringing men into a true and happy relation to God. These 
words are: 1. Katallasso, from kata, down, through, throughout, 
and allasso, I change, I effect a change,hence katallasso,! change 
thoroughly or throughout, I effect a thorough change, as between 
parties at variance. This word occurs six times, rendered, recon- 
cile, viz. in Rom. v. 10 (twice), in 1 Cor. vii. 11, in 2 Cor. v. 18, 



NECESSITY AND CAUSE. 7 

ordinary importance; and especially in consequence of the 
unhappy questioning which has been going on among us 
these late years concerning this subject, it is necessary as 
well to examine what the word of God teaches, as also, in 
the light of that word, in all quietness to test what men 
have taught concerning this subject aside from the word 
of God, and which side-teaching has so often perplexed 
simple souls. By a sincere love of the truth, we can find 
it; and by remembering that we can never lose anything 
by giving up wrong opinions for the sake of the word of 



19 arid 20. Its derivatives are: (1) Katallage, a change throughout, 
or a thorough change; it is used four times, viz. in Rom. v. 11 
(there incorrectly translated atonement; it should be reconciliation), 
in Rom. xi. 15, reconciling, and in 2 Cor. v. 18 and 19, reconcilia- 
tion. (2) Apokatallasso, from apo, from, out of and katallasso (as 
above), hence I change thoroughly from, or I effect a thorough 
change from or out of, as from or out of one state or condition 
into another; it occurs three times, rendered reconcile, viz. in 
Eph. ii. 16, and in Col. i. 20 and 21. (3) Diallassomai, from clia, 
through, throughout, and the passive form of allasso (as above), 
hence of the same force as katallasso in the passive, that is, be 
changed throughout or thoroughly; it occurs but once, viz. in 
Matt. v. 24, rendered be reconciled. 2. Hilasmos is the second of 
the two principal N. T. words under consideration; its root-word 
is the adjective Jiilaos (not used in theN. T.), gracious, favorable, 
kind, cheerful, hence the noun hilasmos would mean gracious- 
ness etc., but is restricted to the meaning of what makes graci- 
ous, kind, cheerful, hence the act or thing which affords grace, 
cheer, kindness, favor, and is translated propitiation in the tico 
only passages in which it occurs, 1 John ii. 2 and iv. 10. Its 
related words used in the N. T. are: (1) Hileoos, same as hilaos 
above, gracious, merciful, kind; occurs twice, viz. in Matt. xvi. 
22 (rendered be it far; better, have mercy, or spare) and in Heb. 
viii. 12, rendered merciful. (2) Hllaskomai, the verb, meaning in 
the two N. T. passages in which it occurs plainly this and nothing 
more: I show grace, mercy or kindness with respect to, that is, 
I pardon; Luke xviii. 13, rendered be merciful, and Heb. ii. 17, 
the A. V. rendering, to make reconciliation, the R. V. rendering, 
to make propitiation, plainly meaning, to show mercy with respect 
to, that is, to pardon. (3) Rilasterion, neuter adjective, showing 



8 THE RECONCILIATION. 

God, we can with serenity of mind search after the truth. 
But by knowing and, understanding the truth, we shall 
better learn to know our God and his Son, Jesus Christ, 
our Saviour, and thereby become more and more truly 
free. "If ye continue in my word," says Jesus, "ye shall 
know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 
viii. 31, 32). 

2. Not only in the Christian religion, but also in 
heathenism has the necessity of reconciliation made itself 
felt. There is a witness within man, a witness whose voice 
has never by any means been completely silenced, a wit- 
ness that testifies that it is impossible for man to be saved 
or to obtain peace without reconciliation. Even pagans 
feel that their happiness depends upon their being in a 
right relation to God; but they also feel that now they are 
not in a right relation to God, and this fills them with 
fear before their gods. TherefDre, also their hearts cry 

mercy, one who or that which exhibits grace or mercy; occurs 
twice: Rom. iii. 25, rendered a propitiation, that is, as one who 
shows mercy, and Heb. ix. 5, rendered mercy-seat, the Septuagint 
translation of the 0. T. term kapporeth (the lid or covering of the 
ark in the tabernacle of Israel) being hilasterion, Ex. xxv. 17, 21 
and elsewhere. 

Taking it all in consideration, there is a-real identity of 
import and application of the three principal Biblical terms, 
atonement, propitiation, and reconciliation, and that is what our 
Author holds forth in this treatise, showing that God is never in 
the Scriptures said to be the object of what these words imply, 
but that man is the object, and that God through his represen- 
tatives, and not man, — Christ being most supremely God's re- 
presentative, as he frequently declared (e. g. John v. 19, 30, 36, 
48) — , is the subject, the author, or doer of the acts expressed in 
these words, these acts being always represented as directed 
towards and bearing upon man. All the Bible terms on this 
subject clearly denote, not God's becoming merciful, conciliated, 
reconciled, appeased, propitiated, or the like, but God's shotting 
himself, by sending Christ and having him to do his work, as 
already merciful and gracious, so that he needed not to be con- 
ciliated, reconciled, appeased, or propitiated. J. G. P. 



NECESSITY AND CAUSE. 9 

for reconciliation. Their many sacrifices, ceremonies, 
tormentings of self, pilgrimages, etc. are just so many cries 
after reconciliation unto God. This feeling of theirs is 
no error, but a deep truth. All thoughts of salvation 
without reconciliation only bear witness of a stupified con- 
science or an effort to silence it. The Holy Scriptures 
testify with the greatest possible decisiveness of the 
necessity of reconciliation. The whole object of Christ's 
coming and work in the world was reconciliation. Every 
religion — pagan, Jewish, and Christian — is penetrated 
with the expressed or implied need of reconciliation. Not 
to stifle or to explain away this need, but to confirm, 
strengthen, and satisfy it was Christ sent by the Father into 
the world. 

3. Often even such men as, when there is no danger, 
impudently and without fear deny God, are seen to tremble 
at the nearness of death, because, in spite of all their 
denials, they feel themselves standing before God. Their 
conscience testifies that they are in a wrong relation to 
him, and this fills their soul with fear and despair. There 
was once a man who delivered a lecture before a large 
concourse of people, in which lecture he tried to prove, 
amid the applause of the audience, that there is no God 
and no eternity, that no reconciliation is necessary, that 
no judgment or reckoning would ever come or ought to 
be expected, etc. When he had concluded his lecture, 
there stepped forward an old man, who related how once 
from the banks of a river he had seen a boat in the act of 
being more and more drawn by the current towards a 
waterfall. In the boat sat a man, who with all his might 
was using one oar to stop the boat or bring it to the shore; 
the other oar was broken. When the man saw that all his 
work was in vain and that in a few moments he would have 
to meet an unavoidable death, then in despair he let go 
his oar, fell down on his knees in the boat and cried to 
God for mercy. He was saved in a very wonderful 



IO THE RECONCILIATION. 

manner. "And" — thus the old gentleman concluded — 
"that man was just this person, who now here before you 
has tried to show that there is no God, no judgment, no 
eternity, and no need of reconciliation." Pale and tremb- 
ling, the infidel withdrew while the old gentleman was 
speaking; and the audience dispersed with feelings of 
sadness. 

4. Thus, as to the necessity of reconciliation, testifies 
not only the word of God, but also the conscience of every 
man. But then arises this question, whether it was God, 
or man, or perhaps both parties, that needed to be recon- 
ciled. And in this question it is that the thoughts of God 
and man separate as far as heaven and earth. Just as 
soon as Adam had sinned, he received in his heart another 
image of God than he had had. Instead of returning, as 
a fallen son, to God with confidence, he fled from him 
with terror, hid himself from him and endeavored to con- 
ceal the truth from him. "The evil spirit had," as Luther 
expresses himself, "snatched the true image of God from 
Adam, darkened it and blotted it out of his heart." The 
change which had taken place in Adam's heart made him 
believe that God, also, had changed. 

5. It is this thought about God that runs through 
the whole of the worship of the heathen. The heathen 
imagine God to be a dreadful being, and they always 
regard the hindrance to man's salvation as lying in a 
certain wrath or fierceness that has filled the heart of God 
in consequence of man's sin. Their worship is therefore 
always marked by fear and bondage. It is with reference 
to this that Paul says to the Christians: "Ye have not re- 
ceived the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have 
received the Spirit of adoption" (Rom. viii. 15). There- 
fore, the reconciliation which the heathen fancy is always 
a reconciliation which has its source in man, and its aim 
to appease God. They have only the light of nature to 
judge by, and therefore they judge of God according to 



NECESSITY AND CAUSE. II 

what they are themselves. This wrath in the heart of 
God they wish to appease, partly by gifts which they offer 
to him, as gold, silver, animals, and human beings, and 
partly by self-torture or pain inflicted on themselves. 
They think that his wrath will allow itself to be soothed 
by such means, and especially by seeing the sinful suffer. 
They well know that their own wrath is soothed by gifts, or 
by causing sufferings, or by seeing him suffer who has 
offended them; and so they judge of God accordingly. 
Such is their darkness. Air their worship of God proceeds 
from the principle that God is angry with them. 

6. But, alas! this idea we find not only among the 
heathen, but it is so deep-roted in all human nature, that 
it seeks to maintain its hold even where the word of God 
is known and read. From this wrong view of God it 
comes that men often consider Christ, whom God in his 
grace has sent to reconcile us to himself, as one on whom 
God has poured out his wrath, in order that he might be 
gracious to us. Yea, many truly living and dear children 
of God view this as the very essence of Christ's work, and 
they even fear that, if they may not believe this to be 
so, Christ would be entirely superfluous. They think 
that they never can escape the wrath of God, unless it has 
been poured out upon some one else in their stead. In 
their opinion, the chief significance of Christ is that he be a 
shelter or shield against God, or, so to speak, a lightning- 
rod for his wrath, in order that they may feel safe before 
him. May God open their eyes more and more. They 
do not understand what injury they are doing themselves 
by thinking worse of him than he deserves. God would 
fain, as any other father, like to be truly known by his 
children. 

7. Contrary to all such perverse imaginations, the 
Scriptures teach that no change took place in God's dispo- 
sition towards man in consequence of his sin; that, there- 
fore, it was not God who needed to be reconciled to man, 



12 THE RECONCILIATION. 

but that it was man who needed to be reconciled to God; 
and that, consequently, reconciliation is a work which pro- 
ceeds from God and is directed towards man, and aims 
not to appease God, but to cleanse man from sin, and to 
restore him to a right relation with God. 

8. That no change of disposition in God towards 
man took place on account of man's sin, this may indeed 
far exceed our comprehension. Yes, we may be ready to 
call it the most unreasonable thing, that the love of God 
should not have suffered any abatement, or interruption, 
by the fall of man. But however unreasonable and foolish 
it may appear, still it is a fact. If you, with your little 
understanding, cannot comprehend such love, well, that 
does not alter the fact. It is far better for us that the 
fact, happily, remains as it is. And God has shown this 
in that he has so loved this sinful world, that he has given 
it his only begotten Son to be its Saviour. "With God 
there can be no variableness, neither shadow ol turning" 
(Jam. i. 17). He remains the one he is from everlasting 
to everlasting. Dreadful is the injury and desolation which 
the sin of man has caused, but the desolation of changing 
the disposition of God, that is a thing man's sin has not been 
able to do. Just as the deluge, indeed, reached far above 
the highest mountains so as to destroy all life on the earth, 
but it did not reach to the sun to extinguish it or cool it 
off; so the sin of man was, indeed, enough to make all 
flesh on the earth depraved, but it could not change the 
disposition of God or make him any thing else but love. 
"God is love" (1 John iv. 8, 16). God has not only been 
love or become love, but he is love from everlasting to 
everlasting, perfect love. But perfect love can never be 
diminished, because it would then no longer be perfect. 
Only that which is imperfect can be increased or decreased. 

9. Consequently, the love of God never needed to 
be restored by any propitiation, because it was never 
lost; it never needed to be increased, for it was never 



NECESSITY AND CAUSE. 13 

diminished. God loves because he is love, and he con- 
tinued to be love, in spite of our fall into sin. God's love 
for the world was not of one kind before the fall, and of 
another kind after the fall; and, again, it did not become 
of still another kind after the death of Christ. A higher 
degree of love cannot be conceived of than this, that God 
gives his only begotten Son. But with such a love he has 
loved Cain as well as the virgin Mary, Judas as well as 
John, Demas as well as Paul. Just as God lets his sun 
shine as mildly on the field of the ungodly as on the field 
of the righteous, and as he lets the rain fall just as co- 
piously on the meadow of the ungodly as on that of the 
righteous, so he has given Christ for the ungodly just as 
well as for the godly; and this he has done, not as a help 
for himself to love them, but that he might help them out 
of sin, and help them to true love. Therefore Paul does 
not say that God increased his love to us by Christ dying 
for us, nor that the change supposed to have taken place 
in God's disposition by our fall was remedied or removed, 
but he does say this: "God commendeth his love toward us, 
in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" 
(Rom. v. 8). And John does not say: By Christ laying 
down his life for us, the love of God has been restored to 
us. No, he says this: "Hereby perceive we the love of God, 
because he laid down his life for us" (i John iii. 16). And 
again (Revised Version): "Herein was the love of God 
manifested in us [that is, in our case], that God hath sent 
his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live 
through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but 
that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation 
for our sins" (1 John iv. 9, 10). And when the Lord him- 
self would by pictures illustrate this disposition of God, 
he related the stories of the lost sheep, the lost piece of 
money, and the prodigal, or the lost, son (Lukexv). The 
father of that prodigal son had felt grief, yes, deep grief, 
but his love had not in the least suffered decrease; he 



14 THE RECONCILIATION. 

loved his son none the less now than before. The shep- 
herd had felt grief for the lost sheep, but he so loved it 
that for its sake he left the ninety and nine, and went after 
the one that was lost. And mark you: Christ is using 
these illustrations, not in order to show the disposition of 
God's heart before the fall, nor what it should become 
after his death, but in order to show us how it always had 
been and always is towards sinners. 

10. But, perhaps, some one now says: "God had to 
be reconciled, not indeed that it might be possible for him 
to love man, but so that it might be possible for him to 
bestow his grace upon man. His love may, indeed, have 
remained unchanged, but without an expiation as a satis- 
faction no grace was possible for sinners.'' This is ap- 
parently a very important objection. And we will there- 
fore first of all inquire: Is this taught anywhere in the 
word of God, so that we there may read about it? This 
question must be answered thus: No, nowhere. Butwhence, 
then, has this thought been derived? Answer: It has been 
derived from that wrong image of God which by the fall 
has been burnt into our natural heart. But this image 
cannot be harmonized or reconciled with the image which 
the word of God gives us. But furthermore we ask: 
Was it not grace that God gave his Son for the redemp- 
tion of sinners? Can any greater grace be conceived of in 
heaven or on earth? Grace is a love that is wholly un- 
merited by him who is the object of it. But then, the 
sending of Christ into the world, his life, his death, and 
his work, all this is not a cause of God's grace, but a con- 
sequence of it, yea, the highest conceivable expression of 
this grace. For no manifestation of love has ever been so 
unmerited, no work of God has been such perfect grace, 
as just this manifestation and this work, that he gave to 
the world his only begotten Son. Yes, indeed, back of 
all the works of God are his love and grace as the ever 
unmoved and immovable foundation, the never failing, 



NECESSITY AND CAUSE. 15 

but always overflowing fountain out of which issue all his 
acts of redemption. O may we allow our heavenly Father 
to be as good as he is. He is jealous of the honor to be 
considered just as he is. 

11. "But," so some one will say, "though the love of 
God was not diminished by sin, still his justice suffered 
injury, and it requires satisfaction; his love is bound by 
his justice." To this we answer, first: It is nowhere so 
written, and in such important matters it is not advisable 
to teach anything else than what the word of God teaches. 
There is not to be found a single passage in the Bible setting 
forth the atonement as having its cause in this, that the 
justice of God needed satisfaction. But if some one says / 
that this is, however, the spirit of the whole Bible, then 
let such a one, in the name of God, at once pause before 
this solemn question: How is it that just that which is 
said to constitute the spirit of the whole Bible, is nowhere 
written in the Bible? No; the spirit of the Bible is what 
the Bible says — that is certain. But love and justice are 
never in the Bible set forth as being in conflict with each 
other, so that one can bind the other. On the contrary, it 
is right and just both for God and men to love, to have com- 
passion upon and to save sinners. It was righteous and 
just that God so loved the world as to give his only be- 
gotten Son for its salvation. Yes, nothing can be more 
just and righteous than such a love.* 

* In translating into English the one Swedish word ("rdtt- 
fcirdig", the adjective, "rattfardighet", the noun — the Swedish 
letter a has the sound of the English diphthong ai in air), the 
word which the Author uses in this paragraph and in several of 
the following, I think it best to use both of the words, just and 
righteous, or sometimes right, and their corresponding nouns, 
justice and righteousness. There are in Swedish, as well ac in 
English, two distinct words with this shade of difference in 
meaning; but the one means rather less than the wox&jvAt, and 
the other rather more than the word righteous. The first is "rdtt- 
vis", literally "right-icise" , from which comes righteous (see the 



V 



1 6 THE RECONCILIATION. 

12. To love those who are nearest to us, our friends 
and brethren, is indeed a just and righteous act; but it is 
a higher kind of righteousness and justice to love our 
enemies, and a perfect righteousness or justice is perfectly 
to love one's enemies. When, therefore, the Lord would 
teach his disciples to be righteous after the likeness of God 
he said: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, 
do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which 
despitefully use you, and persecute you .... For if you 
love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not 
even the publicans the same?" (Matt. v. 44,46). That is, if 
you love only your friends, then you are not more righteous 
than the heathen and the publicans can be, because they, 
also, love them by whom they are loved. Yea, what right- 
eousness is it which God in the law requires as correspond- 
ing to his own righteousness? The Saviour gives this an- 
swer: "Thou shalt love God above all things, and thy 

large dictionaries), but which, singularly enough, has not the 
meaning of righteous, but of just, and that in rather more of an 
outward, legal or moral sense than as an intrinsically virtuous or 
right disposition; it is found in the N. T. only as a translation of 
the but twice occuring word endikos, j usi (Rom. hi. 8; Heb. ii. 
2). The same is true, also, of the noun "rattvisa", which like its 
corresponding English j ustice is not used in the N. T. at all, and 
in the O. T. less frequently than its English equivalent. The 
second of the Swedish words referred to, is "rcittfardig", literally 
"right-whole" } that is, wholly right, or thoroughly right, both as 
to disposition and state. It comprises all that is generally meant 
by both of the English words, just and righteous, and is the com- 
mon rendering of the Greek dikaios, occuring 82 times in the N. 
T. and variously translated in the Eevised as well as in the Old 
Version: right, meet, just, righteous. Thus, also, its derivitive 
noun is equivalent to both justice and righteousness. As over 
against the very common theological notion of "divine justice", 
as mainly, if not only, exacting, harsh and severe, our Author 
shows the truth of these lines by Faber about this one of God's 
glorious attributes: 

"Thy justice is the gladdest thing 

Creation can behold./' J. 67. P. 



NECESSITY AND CAUSE. 1 7 

neighbour as thyself". But by "neighbour" the Lord 
does not mean friends only, but also enemies, as he him- 
self explains in the parable ol "The Good Samaritan". 
To love enemies — remember this — to love enemies is 
therefore a likeness of God's righteousness. Imagine two 
men who have been offended. One of them says: "My 
righteousness, or sense of justice, is violated or offended, 
and requires satisfaction if I am to show any favor towards 
him who offended me." But the other one, so far from 
demanding any satisfaction, sacrifices all that he has, that 
he may restore and reconcile the offender to himself. 
Which of these two is like God? In which of them do you 
see holy, righteous love reflect itself? Judge for yourself. 
And if you are hesitating, ask: which one of them is like 
Christ? Because he — Christ — is the pattern and touch- 
stone; he that is like him, is like God, because he is "the 
express image of God's substance" (Heb i. 3). He that 
loves like Christ, he loves with a holy and righteous love, 
such as the love of God is. Verily, the love which was in 
God showed itself to be righteous and holy just in this, 
that he did not seek satisfaction for himself, but salvation 
for us, yea, he sacrificed all — even his only begotten Son 
— for our salvation. 

13. But let us hear yet another objection that per- 
plexes many honest souls. Perhaps, if we hear it, we may 
untie some knot for some such soul. "Well," says some 
one, "certainly it is right and just to love and be gracious 
and of course he is more righteous and more like Christ 
that does not demand any satisfaction for himself, but in- 
stead sacrifices all, in order that he may save the one who 
has sinned against him. But, still, there is in God yet 
another kind of righteousness: namely, the righteousness 
that judges and punishes, and this demanded satisfaction." 
To this we must again answer: It is nowhere thus written; 
and as something outside of the word of God, it is not 
well to assert any such thing. The Bible does not know 



l8 THE RECONCILIATION. 

of more than one kind of righteousness of God, although 
this manifests itself in many different ways. Because God 
is just and righteous, he loves sinners and sacrifices all, 
that he may save them; he sends his Son, his Spirit, and 
his word etc. For to do such things is just and righteous. 
Not to love or not to seek to save sinners is not just or 
righteous. The person who does not love and try to save 
sinners is not righteous, Paul suffered all things, forsook 
all things and subjected himself to any thing, in order that 
he might "by all means save some" (i Cor. ix. 22), for he 
was a righteous man and a partaker of God's righteousness. 
Without such love he could not have been righteous after 
the likeness of God. 

14. Further, because God is just and righteous, he 
hates all sin and unrighteousness. Not to hate sin is never 
just or righteous. He that does not with all his heart 
hate all sin, cannot be just or righteous. No one on earth 
has loved sinners so perfectly and hated sin so perfectly as 
Jesus, for no one has in the matter of righteousness been 
so perfectly like God as he. To love the sinner is not a 
sort of righteousness different from that of hating sin, but 
it is another manifestation of one and the same righteous- 
ness. 

15. But still further: because God is just and right- 
eous in his relation both to sin and the sinner, he threatens 
and punishes those who live in sin, and lets them taste of 
the hatred which he has for sin, so that they may repent 
and be saved. That father who does not in some way 
punish his child for wrong-doing, is not a just and right- 
eous father, and has no true fatherly love. That govern- 
ment which does not punish criminals, is not a just and 
righteous government, and has no true love for its people. 
To punish in order to inflict evil on the one punished is 
unjust and unrighteous, and only he that is evil can do 
evil, but God is not evil, for he is love; but to punish 
in order to produce repentance is righteous, just, and good. 



NECESSITY AND CAUSE. 19 

16. But still more: because God is righteous, he re- 
joices over each and every sinner that repents (Lukexv. 6, 
10, 32), for it is just and righteous to rejoice over a sin- 
ner's repentance, and he who does not do that is not right- 
eous. Therefore, all those who partake of God's righteous- 
ness rejoice over the repentance of sinners. Jesus, also, 
was glad over the repentance of sinners, but wept over the 
hardening of their hearts, because he was just and right- 
eous like God. But further: because God is righteous, he 
brings into everlasting bliss with himself all those who are 
righteous, but separates for ever from himself all those 
who have gone so far, that they cannot be renewed to re- 
pentance and be made righteous. For him who is per- 
fectly righteous, there is no suitable place but in heaven, 
because he is fit for no other place. For him who is per- 
fectly hardened and unrighteous, there is no place in 
heaven, because he is fit for no place there. And it is 
just and righteous of God to put every one in his right 
place. 

17. All — all the things we have now set forth — are not 
different kinds of divine justice or righteousness, but only 
different manifestations of one and the same justice or 
righteousness, which manifests itself differently under dif- 
ferent circumstances. And this justice or righteousness 
can never change. Also these manifestations of it will, 
therefore, remain the same through all ages. To change 
the righteousness or justice of God would be to change 
God himself. His righteousness and justice are and will 
continue to be through all eternity such as from eternity 
they have been. Least of all has Christ come into the 
world to change them, for he is himself just and righteous 
exactly like and in the same way as his heavenly Father. 
Yea, it would be a misfortune for us, if this state and con- 
dition of God's righteousness and justice in any way were 
or could be changed. Righteousness is no antithesis to 
love, no limitation of love, no restraint or check on love. 



20 THE RECONCILIATION. 

On the contrary, perfect love is the perfect manifestation 
of perfect righteousness, Behold Christ. In him you can 
see and learn that, for he is "the brightness of God's glory, 
and the express image ol his person" (Heb. i. 3). 

18. "Well" — thus some one again objects — "this 
may indeed be true, but the wrath of God cannot be de- 
nied. Most certainly the Scriptures speak of that. The 
wrath of God had to be appeased through the death of 
Christ, if we were to obtain grace." — Answer: We will in 
our next chapter see what the word of God teaches con- 
cerning that subject. May God help us, that we may in 
all simplicity follow the teachings of his word, for "the 
testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; the 
statutes of the Lord are right .... enlightening the eyes;" 
and "the word of our God shall stand for ever," "it liveth 
and abideth for ever" (Ps. xix. 7, 8; Is* xl. 8; 1 Pet. i. 23). 



CHAPTER II. 

The Reconciliation with Reference to the Wrath of God. 

19. "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. 
Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall 
be saved from wrath through him" (Rom. v. 8, 9). In the 

preceding chapter we observed that the word of God no- 
where teaches that God was to be reconciled through 
Christ, and that we ought not to speak of these things 
otherwise than the word of God speaks of them. But 
then, at last, this question arose: "What shall we say to 
all that which the Scriptures teach concerning the wrath 
of God? Did not the wrath of God need to be appeased? 
And did not this take place through the death of Christ?" 
— Well,- let us see what God in his word says on this 
subject. We would say with David: "The testimonies of 



CONCERNING THE WRATH OF GOD. 21 

the Lord are very sure" (Ps. xciii. 5*). Is it, then, any- 
where written in the word of God that God's wrath was 
to be appeased through Christ's death, or that it has been 
appeased through Christ's death? If it is thus written in 
the word of God, then it must be held as true; if not, it 
must be given up. The question is, therefore: Is it 
written? To this it must replied: No, it is nowhere thus 
written. In the whole Bible there is no such passage. 
No prophet, no evangelist, no apostle, not John the Bap- 
tist, nor Christ either, has taught that the wrath of God 
was to be appeased through the death of Christ; and then 
it is not advisable for us to put any such doctrine into the 
word of God.** No; it is always safest to keep to the 
word of God. 

20. But what, then, is the wrath of God? By the 
wrath of God may be meant that God hates all sin and 
unrighteousness. But this wrath of God can certainly 
never be appeased or changed. Just think how dreadful 
it would be if God should cease to hate sin. That would 



* The Swedish Old (Authorized) Version gives these words, 
in conformity with Luther's German Version, so very expressively 
thus: "Thy word is a right [or true] doctrine. " ("Dein Wortist 
eine rechte Lehre"). J. G. P. 

** It is now, presumably, both generally known and 
acknowledged that the passages in our old [as yet Authorized] 
Swedish Version, where the reconciliation of God is spoken of, 
are incorrectly translated. These passages are: Ex. xxx. 16; 2 
Sam. xxi. 14; xxiv. 25; Mic. vi. 6; Heb. viii. 12. [Note by the 
Author, P. W. — To which I would add: These greatly mis- 
translated passages in the Old Swedish Version, like Luther's 
German, making God the object of the reconciliation or the 
atonement, (giving respectively, "He permits himself to be re- 
conciled over their souls," "then was God reconciled to the 
land," "with what shall I reconcile God?" "I will be reconciled 
over their iniquities"; the last Luther gives: "I will be gracious 
as to their faults," compare Jer. xxxi. 34), are all quite well and 
correctly rendered both in the Authorized and in the Revised 
English Version. J. G. P.]. 



22 THE RECONCILIATION. 

put an end to all hope of our salvation. For God would 
then no longer be just and righteous. Not to hate sin 
evinces an unrighteous person, as we have said now many 
times. If you see a man that does not hate sin, you can 
at once say: This man is not like God; this is not a right- 
eous man. Hence we can readily understand that Christ's 
death did not make God to cease hating sin; and neither 
would there in that effect, if it were possible, be any sal- 
vation for us. 

21. But by God's wrath can also be meant that God 
is displeased with, threatens, and punishes all who live in 
sin. But neither is this wrath of God at all quenched or 
appeased by the death of Christ. Nor can it be changed. 
Because, still, after the death of Christ, God is displeased 
with all who live in sin; even yet, this day, he threatens 
and punishes them, and will continue to do so. Paul says: 
"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all 
ungodliness and unrighteousness of men" (Rom. i. 18). 
Yea, after the death of Christ this wrath has manifested 
itself more dreadfully than at any time before, as in the 
destruction of Jerusalem. When the Lord predicted this 
destruction he expressed himself thus: "There shall be 
wrath upon this people" (Luke xxi. 23). Even to-day, it is 
true of all who live in sin, that they are "the children of 
wrath" (Eph. ii. 3). In Rom. iii. 5 the apostle says that 
"God vis/teth with wrath". [English Revised Version]. For 
this reason he also exhorts the Christians: "Avenge not 
yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath" (that is, the 
wrath of God). (Rom. xii. 19). The wrath of God shall 
find them that do evil. In Eph. v. 6 and Col. iii. 6 the 
apostle says that because of sins "the wrath of God cometh 
upon the children of disobedience." 

22. The apostle never intimates with as much as a 
single word that this fact has been changed by the death 
of Christ. On the contrary, his words show that it still 
ceaselessly continues. And it would, indeed, be a mis- 



CONCERNING THE WRATH OF GOD. 23 

fortune for us if it were not so. If this relation were 
changed, then ungodliness and spiritual lethargy would so 
prevail in the world, that no one could be saved. But 
this wrath of God is no more a bar to his love than the 
true fatherly wrath in a man is a bar to his fatherly love. 
A father cannot be pleased with his child that lives in 
sin; but he can so love it, that if he could save it, he would 
willingly die for it. And he punishes it, that if possible he 
may save it. So, likewise, does God. What does also all 
experience testify even unto this day? Behold what punish- 
ments God suffers to come over individuals as well as over 
entire nations when sin gets the ascendency and prevails 
over everything. Yea, even believers, when they sin, 
must taste the displeasure of God and that often quite 
severely both in their conscience and in outward chastise- 
ments. Least of all did Christ come into the world to 
change this relation, because he himself has the same dis- 
pleasure as the Father toward those who live in sin. We 
read in Mark iii. 5 about him, that "he looked round about 
on them [his enemies] with anger/ 9 and in this wrath was 
the same divine earnestness as in the wrath of the Father. 
23. But by the wrath of God may, also, be meant 
that at the last day, at the end of this age, he will for ever 
separate from himself all those whom it has not been pos- 
sible "to renew again unto repentance" (Heb. vi. 6), but 
who have obstinately defied all his endeavors to save 
them. This is what the Bible calls "the wrath to come." 
Of this wrath John the Baptist says to the Pharisees: "O 
generation [offspring] of vipers, who hath warned you to 
flee from the wrath to come?" (Matt. iii. 7; Luke iii. 7). 
This wrath, surely, is not appeased; but just according to 
the threatenings of God it shall, at the last day, come upon 
all the ungodly, as Paul says: "After thy hardness and 
impenitent heart thou treasurest up unto thyself wrath 
against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous 
judgment of God" (Rom. ii. 5). Yea, Christ is so far from 



24 THE RECONCILIATION. 

having appeased this wrath, that just he himself is the one 
who will bring about and execute the sentence of God's 
wrath upon the ungodly. Therefore this wrath is called 
also the wrath of the Lamb, as when in Rev. vi. 16 it is 

said that the ungodly shall say to the mountains and to 
the rocks: "Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him 
that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb/' 
In the prophets, also, the breaking forth of the judgments 
of God's wrath is put in connection with the coming of 
the Messiah. Hence we can understand also this, that 
there never can be any question of appeasing this wrath. 
24. Let us here again bring to remembrance the 
blessed words of our Saviour: "He that hath seen me 
hath seen the Father" (John xiv. 9; cf. xii. 45). Let us 
not get tired of listening to these words, as if we knew 
them to well, already. They are fully applicable here as 
to the wrath of God. If there be in God any wrath differ- 
ent from that found in Christ, then it is not true, that he 
that seeth the Son seeth the Father. For then the Son is 
not so like the Father as he says. Then neither is that 
true which the apostle says, that the Son is "the brightness 
[effulgence] of God's glory, and the express image of his 
person" (Heb. i. 3)/ When I then look on the Son I can- 
not say, "The Father is just like him," but, instead, I 
must say, "The Father is not like him." But now Christ 
is the very image of God's person, or substance, and hence 
we know that in God there is no attribute which is not 
found in the Son! What God loves, the Son loves; what 
God hates, the Son hates. Where God condemns and is 
angry, there also the Son condemns and is angry. The 
Father is not more "severe" than the Son, and the Son is 
not milder or more gentle than the Father. Perhaps you 
are amazed at such a saying. But quiet yourself before 
the word of God. It is no jest, but a divine truth, that 
"he that seeth the Son seeth the Father." That is just 
what the Father is like — he is just like Jesus. The wrath 



CONCERNING THE WRATH Of GOD. 25 

of God is and continues to be the same that it has been 
just as long as sin exists. This wrath is in its essence 
nothing else than his hatred for sin. And as long as sin 
exists God must hate it. Otherwise he would not be just, 
or righteous. But this hatred of sin does not exclude 
compassion for those who are captives in sin. Christ, 
also, hated sin, but he had compassion upon sinners. 
God's people, also, hate sin, but they love and take pity 
on sinners, and that just because they are partakers of the 
nature of God, for such is God. O my friend, do you 
wish to see God, then stand not aside from Christ, but 
look right at Christ. Do not imagine that behind Christ 
stands a dreadful image representing God, but look right 
into the eyes of Christ (may the expression be allowed!). 
There, in him, you see the face of God. To do so will 
make you intimately acquainted with God, and happy in 
God, so that the words of Peter can be applied even to 
your faith, that by Christ you do believe in God (i 
Pet. i. 21). 

25. It is wrath against the person, and hatred of the 
person, which excludes or bars love. This hatred may be 
called personal, because its object is not sin, but the person, 
and because it wishes the person evil. Such is the wrath 
of the devil, as it is said in Rev. xii. 12: "The devil is 
come down unto you, having great wrath, because he 
knoweth that he hath but a short time." And again, in 1 
Pet. v. 8: "Your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion 
walketh about, seeking whom he may devour." Such 
wrath the heathen think their gods possess, and therefore 
they labor to appease them. Such wrath, also, is often 
found among men, as the Scriptures say: "Their throat is 
an open sepulchre; the poison of asps is under their lips: 
whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: their feet 
are swift to shed blood" etc. (Rom. iii. 13 et seq.). This 
personal wrath will often allow itself to be appeased, some- 
times by gifts, and sometimes by getting revenge. But 



26 THE RECONCILIATION. 

mark, this wrath in man is not a remnant of the image of 
God, but, on the contrary, it is a part of that poison which 
the serpent at the fall poured into the heart of man. In 
God no such wrath exists, for in him is nothing sinful or 
devilish. Therefore, neither in Christ, who is "the bright- 
ness of God's glory, and the express image of his person," 
do you ever see any such wrath. But if this wrath does 
not exist in God, then neither is there any need of appeas- 
ing it. No, "God is love," and love excludes all personal 
wrath. God cannot even be tempted with evil (James 

26. In John iii. 36 John the Baptist says: "He that 
believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that be- 
lieveth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God 
abideth on him/' The Baptist says by these words that 
those who live in sin are under the wrath of God, and since 
they will not believe in the Son, who comes to save them 
from sin, they will remain under the wrath or displeasure 
of God, and will never see life. On the other hand, he 
shows that he that believes in Christ has everlasting life, 
and is thus delivered from the wrath which rested on him 
while he lived in sin and unbelief. No passage can speak 
more clearly than this concerning the wrath, of God, and 
no passage can more clearly show that the wrath of God 
is not appeased or quenched, least of all that it was ap- 
peased on the day when Christ died; because, even after 
the death of Christ, why this wrath abideth, as the Baptist 
says, on every one that does not believe the Son. But if 
it abides, or remains, why then indeed it is not appeased 
or quenched. To talk about a wrath being appeased, but 
still abiding, is the same as to talk about a fire being ex- 
tinguished, but still burning. And what would that be?! 
Consequently, the wrath of God abides on every one that 
abides in sin and will not suffer himself to be saved. 

27. But that the believer is delivered from that wrath 
which abides on those who live in unbelief, that depends 



CONCERNING THE WRATH OF GOD. 27 

on his having become righteous by faith in Christ But 

being righteous, he is taken out from the multitude of the 
ungodly, on whom abides the wrath of God, and now he 
belongs to the congregation of the righteous, on whom 
rests the good pleasure of God. In every home you can 
see a picture of this state. When a child lives in sin, it is 
the object of its father's displeasure and punishment; but 
when it leaves sin, then it becomes the object of his good 
pleasure; mark: not of his love, — for even while it lived 
in sin he loved it, — but of his good pleasure or delight, 
because a good father is pleased with or delights in obedient 
and well-behaved children. But that the sinner thus has 
become the object of God's good pleasure, by becoming 
righteous, that is not any change in God, but in the sin- 
ner who now has come into a new relation with God, and 
thereby has become a partaker of the good pleasure which 
God has towards the righteous. Further, this is not a 
change which took place on the day when Christ died, 
but it takes place the day when a man believes in Christ 
For as long as a man continues in unbelief, so long the 
wrath ot God abides upon him, as we see from the express 
words of John the Baptist. And never in the Bible is this 
change called the appeasing or the reconciling of God; and 
as we often have said, so we say again: it is always most 
wholesome to speak as the oracles of God speak (i Pet. 
iv. 11). 

28. Of another matter Paul speaks in Rom. v. 8 — 
10, where he says: "While we were yet sinners, Christ died 
for us. Much more then, being now justified by [or, more 
correctly, //?] his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through 
him; for if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to 
God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we 
shall be saved by [or, more correctly, in] his life." In 
the first place, the apostle speaks here of something past 
when he says that we were sinners, and that Christ then 
died for us. Afterwards he speaks of something present 



28 THE RECONCILIATION. 

when he says that we now are justified in the blood of 
Jesus, now are reconciled to God by the death of his Son. 
Finally he speaks of something yet future when he says 
that we shall be saved from wrath through him, we shall 
be saved in his life. Mark this connection. In this pas- 
sage the apostle does not, therefore, say one word con- 
cerning the appeasing of God's wrath, but speaks only of 
our salvation from wrath. And this salvation he repre- 
sents as something future. He does not say that we are 
saved from wrath, but that "we shall be saved from wrath;" 
and the words of the apostle must be read as they stand 
written. But what "we" does the apostle mean when he 
says: "We shall be saved from wrath"? He explains it 
himself when he speaks of us who were sinners, but now 
are justified in the blood of Jesus. Consequently, this 
passage treats of the future deliverance of the believers 
from wrath. Concerning this deliverance, or salvation, he 
says also this, that it will be accomplished by or in Christ's 
life; which shows plainly that it has not been accomplished 
by or in Christ's death. 

29. But what, then, is that future salvation of which 
the apostle speaks? Answer: It is the salvation from the 
wrath to come, — of which wrath we have spoken above. 
Of this salvation Paul speaks to the Christians in Thessalo- 
nica: "Ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and 
true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he 
raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered [more 
correctly, delivereth, as the Revised Version has it] us 
from the wrath to come" (1 Thess. i. 9, 10). But what, 
then, is "the wrath to come"? It is the judgment of wrath 
which will come upon the world at the coming of our Lord, 
and which he, our Lord Jesus Christ himself, will execute. 
From this judgment of wrath the righteous shall be saved. 
As God, before he let his judgment come upon Sodom, 
sent angels to rescue righteous Lot; as Joshua, before he 
let the judgment come upon Jericho, sent a messenger into 



CONCERNING THE WRATH OF GOD. 29 

that city to take thence righteous Rahab, in order that not 
she, also, might perish in the general destruction; as the 
Lord, before Jerusalem was destroyed, gave his believers 
a sign to flee and thus in time saved them from that terrible 
judgment of wrath which swept over that city: so the Lord, 
the living Saviour, will take away his own, the righteous, 
from the judgments of wrath which shall come upon the 
world at his coming. Of this God speaks through the 
prophet Joel: "The sun shall be turned into darkness, and 
the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day 
of the Lord come. And it shall come to pass, that who- 
soever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be deliv- 
ered; for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliv- 
erance" [or more correctly, as the Revised Version and the 
Swedish New Translation has it, "there shall he those that 
escape"^, "as the Lord hath said" (Joel ii. 31, 32). This 
is expressed in the viith of Rev. by forbidding the angels, 
who had the power to hurt the earth and the sea and 
the trees, to do any hurt until the servants of God had 
been sealed on their foreheads with the seal of the living 
God. A type of this deliverance of the believers from the 
wrath to come was the deliverance of the children of Israel 
from the judgment of wrath which befell the Egyptians 
through the angel of death. By their marking the door 
posts of their houses with the blood of the passover lamb, 
God delivered them from the general destruction which 
elsewhere swept over the country. 

30. However the subject under consideration may 
be turned, there is nothing in God that could have been 
changed, whether by the fall of man or by the work of 
Christ. His love has not been disturbed by the fall of 
man, nor has his displeasure of evil undergone any change 
by the death of Christ. The latter (his displeasure of 
evil) belongs to his being and is an expression of his 
righteousness as well as the former (his love). Neither 
has the manifestation of his love been restrained by the 



30 THE RECONCILIATION. 

fall of man, because God has manifested his love in a 
higher degree after the fall of man than he ever did be- 
fore. For the sending of the Son into the world is a mani- 
festation of love of God, which in gloriousness so far sur- 
passes everything else as the brightness of the sun sur- 
passes the brightness of the stars. Neither has the mani- 
festations of his wrath or displeasure been caused to cease 
by the death of Christ, for such are yet seen in all the pun- 
ishments which God sends upon single individuals and 
upon communities; and at the coming again of Christ, 
such wrath will manifest itself more dreadfully than ever 
before in the judgment which will come upon the world. 
31. From this we can easily understand why the 
Bible never as much as in a single line speaks of the re- 
conciling of God, while all the religions of the heathen 
are occupied in appeasing him [or what they suppose to 
be gods]. To speak of reconciling God is just as foreign 
to the Bible as to speak of reconciling Christ. Is it true 
— we repeat it again — is it true, that the Father and the 
Son are one, so that he who sees the Son sees the Father, 
then, also, there is in the Son the same love, the same 
righteousnes, the same wrath etc., as in the Father. Hence, 
if one of them needed to be reconciled, then also the other 
needed or needs to be reconciled. As it is a fact of great 
significance, that the Scriptures never speak of Christ 
being reconciled, of his wrath being appeased, or the like, 
so it is a fact of equally great significance, that the Script- 
ures never speak of the Father being reconciled. And as 
little as one can say that Christ is reconciled when his 
disapproval of a sinner is turned into approval, because 
the sinner permits himself to be conquered by his love 
and believes in him, just as little can one say that God, 
the Father, is reconciled when his disapproval of a sinner 
is, in the same way, turned into approval by the sinner's 
repentance and conversion. The love of God and the 
love of the Lamb are one, and the wrath of God and the 



CONCERNING THE WRATH OF GOD. 3 1 

wrath of the Lamb are one; and the Lamb is he that exe- 
cutes both the purposes of God's love and the judgments 
of his wrath. Think if any one began to teach that Christ 
must be reconciled! Who could not at once prove that 
such a doctrine is unbiblical? But since you know this, 
remember then again those blessed words of his own 
mouth: "I and the Father are one" (John x. 30, Rev. 
Vers.). To be reconciled, to be redeemed, and to be 
saved, are three different expressions for the same thing. 
And as certain as it is that the Scriptures, to the question, 
"Who was or is to be saved?" nowhere give the answer, 
"God," but only, "the sinner;" so certain is it that the 
Scriptures, to the question, "Who was or is to be recon- 
ciled?" nowhere give the answer, "God," but only, "the 
sinner." And we ought humbly to abide by the Scriptural 
way of speaking. Let us believe that God has spoken in 
his word just as he meant and not otherwise. 

32. "Very well, but" — thus some one again objects 
— "God has said that 'the soul that sinneth, it shall die' 
(Ezek. xviii. 4, 20), and as a just God, he cannot take 
back his words without a compensating atonement." An- 
swer: These words have never been taken back, and they 
never will be. It is still true, even to-day, "that the soul 
that sinneth, it shall die," and it will be true until the last 
day. No reconciliation in heaven or on earth can set at 
naught these words. To set at naught these words would 
be to set at naught the truth. But God is the truth. No; 
unto the end of days it is fixed what the apostle, long after 
the death of Christ, says: "The wages of sin is death" 
(Rom. vi. 23). He does not say, "the wages of sin was 
formerly death," — as if now in some way, by the death of 
Christ, this fact had been changed, — no; but he does say: 
"the wages of sin is death." Therefore, still, even now 
these days, do all those die and perish who live in sin* 

* When it is taught that Christ paid all sins, and hence that 
no one can be condemned for sins, but only for unbelief, then 



32 THE RECONCILIATION. 

But just as sure as sin is death, just so sure is righteousness 
life; therefore, also, the righteous shall live. It is never 
said in the Bible: "The soul that is righteous shall die." 
No; if any one is righteous, all the word of God says that 
such an one shall live. [See such passages as Ezek. 
xviii. 9; Hab. ii. 4; Rom. i. 17 etc.]. And the one decla- 
ration can as little be taken back as the other. Hence, if 
a sinner becomes righteous, he passes at once "out of 
death into life" (John v. 24, Rev. Vers.). Just as little as 
the Bible teaches that he who heretofore has been right- 
eous shall live even though he now is a sinner, just as little 
does it teach that he who heretofore has been a sinner 
shall die although he now is righteous (Ezek. xviii. 20 — 
32). Here, therefore, nothing is taken back. If the 
righteous fall again under the power of sin, then he comes 
under the word: "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." If 
the sinner is restored and becomes righteous, then he 
comes under the word: "The just shall live." 

33. Of this the whole of Ezek. xviii. speaks very 
fully, some passages of which we have referred to above. 
Let us read portions of what the Lord there says: "But if 
the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath com- 
mitted, and keep all my statutes, and do that which is 
lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die. All 
his transgressions that he hath committed, they shall not 
be mentioned unto him" [Rev. Version: "None of his 
transgressions that he has committed shall be remembered 

is taught a doctrine which is squareiy opposed to the words of 
Paul: "The wages of sin is death." All sin brings with itself 
death, and that as well after as before the death of Christ. "If 
ye live after the flesh, ye must die/' says Paul to the Christians 
(Rom. viii. 13, Rev. Vers.). And unbelief is sin; but UDbelief is 
different from all other sins in this, that it is a rejection of that 
deliverance from sin which God in Christ offers the sinner. So 
far condemnation depends upon unbelief; for if the sinner be- 
lieved, he would be saved from sin, but since he will not believe, 
he remains in his sins and in death. 



CONCERNING THE WRATH OF GOD. 33 

against him"] : "in his righteousness that he hath done he 
shal 1 live. Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked 
should die? saith the Lord God: and not that he should 
return from his way, and live? But when the righteous 
turneth away from his righteousness, and committeth 
iniquity, and doeth according to all the abominations that 
the wicked man doeth, shall he live? All his righteous- 
ness that he hath done shall not be mentioned" [Revised 
Version: "None of his righteous deeds that he hath done 
shall be remembered"] : "in his trespass that he has tress- 
passed, and in his sin that he hath sinned, in them shall he 
die" (verses 21 — 24). This is spoken as plainly as any- 
thing can be: if the righteous man. becomes unrighteous, 
he shall die; if the unrighteous man becomes righteous, 
he shall live. But for those who think otherwise the Lord 
adds (vers 25): "Yet ye say, 'The way of the Lord is not 
equal.' Hear now, O house of Israel: Is not my way 
equal? are not your ways unequal?" As if he would say: 
"Should I be wrong, as ye think? No; far be it. I am right, 
but you are wrong." Then the Lord, for further certainty, 
repeats the same thing that he has spoken of before, and 
uses almost the same words (verses 26 and 27): "When a 
righteous man turneth away from his righteousness, and 
committeth iniquity, and dieth therein; for his iniquity 
that he hath done shall he die. Again, when the wicked 
man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath com- 
mitted, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall 
save his soul alive" etc. — The Lord very well knew that 
this thing needed to be said twice. May we allow it to 
enter our understanding and our heart. The truth is al- 
ways the best gospel. The ways and judgments of God 
are always right. It is our heart that is wrong. 

34. A most remarkable illustration of these truths 
we can read in the history of Nineveh. When Nineveh 
was living in sin and wickedness God caused the announce- 
ment to be made by the prophet Jonah that the city 



34 THE RECONCILIATION. 

should perish. But when Nineveh repented it remained 
standing. How could God in that case take back his 
word? Did he get a satisfying payment that induced him 
to do so? Answer: Not at all. The judgment of God 
concerned Nineveh living in sin. If Nineveh had con- 
tinued in sin, then also the judgment would have been 
fulfilled. But Nineveh repented. "And God saw their works, 
that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of 
the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and 
he did it not" (Jonah iii. 10.) The prophet did indeed 
wish that the judgment, which God had pronounced upon 
the wicked city, should be fulfilled upon the righteous city; 
yea, he was provoked at its not thus occurring. "But it 
displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry. 
And he prayed unto the Lord, and said, T pray thee, O 
Lord, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my 
country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I 
knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to 
anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the 
evil. Therefore now, O Lord, take, I beseech thee, my 
life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live" 
(Jonah iv. i, 2). In Jonah you see the thoughts of man; 
and as the grace of God came in conflict with them, Jonah 
became so angry that he wished to die. O how foolish it 
is to be provoked at God's abounding grace! But such is 
the darkness of nature. However, God stood by his right, 
reproved the prophet, judged according to truth, and let 
Nineveh stand. Think what a blessed lesson. Let us 
open our hearts fully for the inexpressible mercy of God. 
35. Such passages of God's word reveal to us why 
the Bible never says that Christ should appease God; but 
rather that he should save men from their sins and make 
them righteous. Because all depended upon that, as we 
just have seen from the words of the prophet. For the 
unrighteous man (as such) there is no salvation, however 
gracious and merciful God may be; and for the righteous 



CONCERNING THE WRATH OF GOD. 35 

man (as such) there is no condemnation, however right- 
eous God may be. Yea, it is the very righteousness of God 
which makes it impossible for the righteous to he condemned. 

The righteous man belongs to God, because he is a partaker 
of the righteousness of God; the wicked man, on the other 
hand, is separated from God, because he is unrighteous. 
If, therefore, a way or means could be found to make 
sinners righteous, then that would be a way or means to 
save them and make them happy. This the apostle Paul 
makes especially plain in Rom. v. 18 et seq., where, in 
effect, he says that the cause of the death and condem- 
nation of "the many" is that through Adam's disobedience 
they "were made sinners" — the sin of Adam has extended 
to them all, and has brought death along with it. On the 
other hand, the condition of life and happiness for "the 
many" is that they "be made righteous." But can that be 
brought about? Is any means to be found by which this 
can be accomplished? Yes, God found such a means: 
namely, the only begotten Son — and he gave him, for he 
so loved the world (Joh. iii. 16). Through his obedience 
it is, says Paul, that "the many shall be made righteous," 
and thus be brought from death unto life, from condem- 
nation unto blessedness. "He learned obedience by the 
things which he suffered; and being made perfect, he be- 
came the author of eternal salvation unto all them that 
obey him" (Heb. v. 8, 9). 

36. In this connection we may consider a passage 
which often has been misunderstod: namely, Gen. ii. 17. 
When God forbade Adam to eat of the tree of the knowl- 
edge of good and evil in Paradise he added: "For in the 
day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die/' Now 
often, suggested by these words, thoughts have been ex- 
pressed like these: "This death sentence must be carried 
out; and to make it possible for men to escape it, it was 
necessary that some one else should suffer the threatened 
death in their stead; otherwise God would not be just." 



$6 THE RECONCILIATION. 

But let us read the words as they stand. We ask: Who 
was it that should surely die? Answer: Adam, who ate of 
the tree. Did not God say: "Thou, or some one in your 
stead?" Answer: No; he said, "thou/' All the rest is an 
addition by men. When was it, then, Adam should die? 
Answer: The same day he ate of the tree. Is it not 
written: "In that day thou shalt die, or some one else must 
die in stead of you some other day?" Answer: No; all such 
is added by men. God's sentence was that he who ate of the 
tree should die, and that on the very day when he ate. Are 
these words changed or taken back anywhere in the Bible? 
Answer; Nowhere. Was then this sentence executed on 
him who sinned, and in the day that he sinned? Answer: 
Yes, precisely as the words announced. In the same day 
that Adam and Eve sinned they died. They were alienated 
from the life of God; this was the spiritual death. Their 
bodies became subject to physical death. And had they 
remained in this condition, they would have been subjected 
to eternal death. The word of God could not come to 
naught. 

37. But not only that. The fall of Adam brought 
sin into the world; and so death came upon all his de- 
scendants. Therefore, looking back on this dreadful ocur- 
rence, Paul says: "The many died" (Rom. v. 15, Revised 
Version). He does not say that many now must have died 
if some one else had not died in their stead. No; he says, 
"the many died" — they really died, just according to 
what God had said. But if they were already dead, then 
no one could die in their stead — it is impossible for any 
one to die in stead of one who is already dead. The only 
thing to be done was to make the dead alive again, if that 
were possible. And it was possible. God found a means 
— and that was to give the only begotten Son. And he 
gave him. For he so loved the world. So little abate- 
ment had his love suffered through the fall. Shall we not 
joyfully praise God as we behold such love? 



CONCERNING THE O. T. SACRIFICES. 37 

38. But the sacrifices — did not the Old Testament 
sacrifices with their blood betoken the necessity of recon- 
ciling God? Answer: What the word of God teaches con- 
cerning them we will consider in the next chapter. May 
God give us love for the truth, and a disposition to under- 
stand the truth. 



CHAPTER III. 
Concerning the Oid Testament Sacrifices. 

39. "And a/most all things are by the law purged with 
blood; and without shedding of blood there is no remission" 

(Heb. 9: 22). In these words the apostle is speaking of 
how matters stood in the times of the Old Covenant. He 
has before shown how the Old Covenant was dedicated 
with blood; how Moses, after having read the law to all 
the people, sprinkled the book and the people with the 
blood of the sacrificed animals; further, how the tabernacle 
and also all the vessels belonging to the service were sprin- 
kled with blood (Heb. ix. 18 — 21). Then he adds in our 
quoted verse: "And almost all things are by the law purged 
with blood," that is, within the jurisdiction of the Mosaic 
law, nearly all cleansings are performed with blood, so 
that there is no remission of sins without shedding of 
blood. 

40. These are words of very great importance. The 
apostle here compares the Old and the New Covenants 
with each other, and points out the typical significance of 
the former with respect to the latter. But before we pro- 
ceed any further, let us carefully look at the words, because 
they have often been greatly misunderstood. First, then, 
we notice that the apostle is speaking of the covenant of 
the law, and how matters were carried on under it. He 
says, in effect, that under the Mosaic covenant of law it is 
almost universally the case, that every thing is purged 



$8 THE RECONCILIATION* 

with blood, and that remission of sins does not occur with- 
out shedding of blood. He is not speaking of the new 
covenant, but of the type he afterwards makes an applica- 
tion with respect to New Testament matters. Further 
we notice that he says, "a/most all things" etc. He does 
not say, "all things." For even under the Old Covenant 
cleansing was sometimes effected without blood, as/ for 
instance, by water or by fire, which we can see from Ex. 
xix. to, Lev. xxii. 6, Num. xxxi. 21 — 24, and several other 
passages. But usually the case was that cleansing took 
place by means of blood. Likewise, it sometimes happened 
even that remission of sins was given without shedding of 
blood. For instance, when David had sinned with Bath- 
sheba he was restored and forgiven without shedding of 
blood (2 Sam. xii. 1— 15). In Lev. v. n — 13 we see that 
in a case of poverty the sin offering might be bloodless, 
and consequently remission of sin could take place with- 
out the shedding of blood. Such cases the apostle suggests 
when he says, "almosi".* However, he does not now 
devote particular attention to that point, but rather to the 
usual case or order: to wit, that under the Old Covenant 
there was no remission of sins without the shedding of 
blood. Finally, he puts the purging and the remission of 

* Upon this little word, almost, which is commonly over- 
looked or altogether to lightly passed over by most expositors, 
the apostle has laid special emphasis; for which reason he has 
placed it at the beginning of the whole sentence. The construc- 
tion and order of the words show, also, that it belongs to the 
whole verse and not only to the first part. [To this note by the 
Author the translator would add: Very strange and unwarrant- 
able is the translation of this passage by the new Revisers of the 
English Version; they transpose, add, and then freely render the 
beginning of the verse thus; "And according to the law, I may 
almost say, all things are cleansed" etc. — and that without a 
marginal reading to show it might be differently rendered, and 
without italics to show what is added, and without authority 
from any ancient manuscript whatever! It is no translation, but 
simply a poor gloss or comment. J. G. P.], 



CONCERNING THE O. T. SACRIFICES. 39 

sins together in a very remarkable manner, which we will 
soon more closely consider. 

41. We can easily see that these words afford a very 
instructive suggestion concerning the Old Testament 
sacrifices, and we will now seek for an answer to the 
question, what these sacrifices did signify. For a correct 
understanding as well of the Old as of the New Testament 
this question is of the greatest importance. Did the sac- 
rifices signify that God must be reconciled, or did they 
signify something else? We have already seen that in all 
the heathen sacrifices there was the underlying thought, 
that God must be reconciled; but here the question is, 
whether the sacrifices ordained by God himself had the 
same or some other significance. Has God himself any- 
where explained their significance, and, if so, how has he 
explained it? 

42. But before we set forth what God in his word says 
in explanation of the sacrifices, let us first see how men 
sometimes have misunderstood them. Often the way is 
cleared for the truth by removing misunderstanding. Con- 
cerning the Old Testament sacrifices men have often 
thought this way: "The righteousness, or justice, of God 
demanded that sin should be punished. Now, if the sin- 
ner himself were to escape punishment, some one else 
must suffer in his place. In no other way and on no other 
ground could sin ever be forgiven. Such penal suffering 
Christ was to endure for the whole world. On the strength 
of this coming payment God could in the Old Testament 
times forgive sins, and he always kept this ground before 
the people in the ever-recurring bloody sacrifices. " It is a 
pious and well-meant idea that has found expression in 
this way of reasoning. May we now examine it in the 
wonderful light of the word of God. 

43. First and foremost it is to be noticed, that there 
is no place in the word of God where it is said that God's 
justice, or righteousness, demanded that the punishment 



40 THE RECONCILIATION. 

must be endured by some one if sin should be forgiven. 
From the first line in the Bible to the last no such passage 
can be found, and without the word of God it is not 
advisable to assert any such thing. On the contrary, just 
the opposite is written in clear examples and words in the 
Bible. This we have seen, as considered in our preced- 
ing chapter, in the case ot Nineveh, but most plainly in 
the words of the Lord by the prophet Ezekiel. There we 
read, namely, that if a sinner is converted and made right- 
eous, then all his former transgressions shall not be men- 
tioned unto him, and that on the ground which the Lord him- 
self there states: to wit, that he has no pleasure at all in the 
death of the wicked, but rather that he should turn from 
his sins, and live. But to those who would not let such 
conduct on his part be true he adds, in effect: "Am I not 
right? O house of Israel, you are wrong" (Ezek. xviii. 25, 
29). That the Lord judges in the same way also in the 
New Testament we learn from the parable of the ten 
thousand talents (Matt, xviii. 23 — 35). We there read 
that when the servant who owed ten thousand talents 
came to render an account, "he fell down and worshipped, 
saying, 'Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee 
all'. Then the lord of that servant was moved with com- 
passion, and loosed him, and forgave him the debt" This 
conduct our Lord sets forth as an expression of how God 
forgives sinners, and as a likeness of how he requires also 
his disciples to forgive. There was no question of pay- 
ment or compensation which some one else should make 
instead of the debtor. The Lord did never say, "I will 
forgive you all your debt, for another has paid it in your 
stead/' 

44. In the viith of Luke our Lord cites a similar in- 
stance. He says: "There was a certain creditor which 
had two debtors: the one owed five hundred pence, and 
the other fifty. And when they had nothing to pay, he 
frankly [i. e. freely] forgave them both." Neither is there 



CONCERNING THE O. T. SACRIFICES. 41 

in this passage the least intimation, that their pardon was 
due to the fact, that another had paid in their stead. Nor 
has the Lord ever represented it as unrighteous either for 
himself or for us to forgive without compensation. And 
if forgiveness could not otherwise take place, except on 
the ground of compensation, why then has God never said 
so in his word? Yea, why has he, on the contrary, as we 
have seen, represented just the opposite as the right way? 
Well, the case is this: it is more righteous to forgive for 
nothing than to forgive for payment, and therefore God is 
first and foremost in forgiving for nothing, because he is 
first and foremost in righteousness.* 

45. All talk of payment for the debt of sin is wholly 
foreign to the word of God. A money debt can be paid; 
the bodily injury which I may have caused another by 
my sin can be recompensed with money; but the debt of 
sin** can never be paid. This the Lord represents in the 

* If God, in the times of the Old Testament, forgave sins 
on the ground of a coming payment, then that would mean that 
in those times he forgave sins on credit But that is a degrading 
thought concerning God and his righteousness. 

** That is, the guilt, the wickedness or the wrong there is 
in sin and which it constitutes. It may be important to remark 
here that in Swedish (probably no less in English) religious speech 
and literature a great deal of confusion has been caused by the 
fact, that the one and the same word, "skuld'^is used to designate 
both debt and guilt. Hence, in what follows of the text above 
I have had to translate the Swedish word now by the one, now by 
the other of the corresponding English words, according to the 
more predominant idea in the context; sometimes I have used 
both words in juxtaposition. As the old idea of cost and pay- 
ment yet lingers in the English word guilt — from the Anglo- 
Saxon geldan, to pay, Old German geltan, to be worth, to 
cost, Swedish "gdld" (pronounced "yeld"), debt — the confound- 
ing of the injury done by an offense, or the fine, or mulct, paid 
for an offense, with the offense itself, is very common, yet, nev- 
ertheless, very erroneous; for sin is nothing less than moral 
guilt, or something morally wrong, an offense against God, 
which in its very nature cannot be paid or made good by any 



42 THE RECONCILIATION. 

above quoted parables by saying that the debtors had 
nothing wherewith to pay. To pay the debt or guilt of 
sin would imply that, by a payment, sin could be caused 
to cease to be guilt. But all sin is guilt; and no payment 
can make sin to be anything else than guilt, or transgres- 
sion, or crime. The debt or guilt of sin can be forgiven, 
but never paid. Therefore, it can also be clearly seen, 
that in those Bible passages, where the forgiveness of sins 
is likened to a release from a debt of money (Luke vii. 41, 
42; Matt, xviii. 24 — 27), not a word is said about payment, 
but only about remission. He who teaches that the world's 
debt of sin has been paid denies the very guilt of sin, that 
is, if he means any thing real or earnest by the payment. 
A paid debt is no longer any debt; and if the debt or guilt 
of the sin of the world is paid, then the world has no 
longer any debt and has no guilt; its sins are then no 
longer debts, and there is nothing of guilt or criminality 
about them.* But O how far is not such language from 
the truth of God's word! May God keep us from falling 

one, nor by any means, but in order to be removed must be con- 
fessed by the committer and forgiven by God. J, G. P. 

* It will not do here first to make a wide distinction be- 
tween the punishment due to sin, as a sort of a fine, and the guilt, 
offense, or moral turpitude inherent in sin itself; and then to go 
on and say that it is the punishment which is regarded as a debt 
paid by vicarious sacrifice and suffering, while the offense, or 
the sin itself, must be repented of and confessed by the commit- 
ter, in order to be pardoned by God. Such distinction and such 
teaching is not true in fact, for even yet God punishes sin and 
will still more hereafter punish it — all punishment of sin is a 
natural consequence of sin, — and to say that it is only the want, 
or absence, or neglecting, of repentance which involves punish- 
ment, would be the same as to say that the debt of all sin has not 
been paid; for unbelief, or neglect of repentance, is sin just as 
much as anything else is, and if the debt of that sin is not paid, 
why, then the final and worst of all debts remains unpaid and 
unatoned; if also that is paid, why, then it is simply impossible 
for any one to be justly punished or condemned by God, no 
matter what sin is committed. J. G. P. 



CONCERNING THE O. T. SACRIFICES. 43 

into such error. Read, for instance, the first chapters of the 
epistle to the Romans, and there you can see whether the 
world has yet any moral debt or guilt, or not. But the 
debt can be forgiven; and how that is done the Lord teach- 
es us by the prophet Isaiah when he says: "Come now, 
and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your 
sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though 
they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool" (Is. i. 
18). What we need is to get rid of our debt, in whatever 
way that now may be done. According to our way of 
judging by nature, a payment to God would be necessary; 
but according to God's way of judging, sins are forgiven 
"without money and without price." A paid forgiveness 
is no forgiveness; just as the returning of a paid note is 
no gift. Neither does God in his word ever speak of any 
payment as ground, or reason, for forgiveness of sins. 

46. Secondly, the Scriptures never represent in any 
way that it is just, or righteous, to punish the innocent 
instead of the guilty. Imagine a father having a lost son, 
a prodigal, who comes to him like the man that owed ten 
thousand talents. Imagine, further, this father saying 
that he cannot forgive his guilty son, unless he may pun- 
ish his innocent son in his stead. Do you think that he 
were a righteous father? Would you say that he acted like 
God? Far be it! Yea, even if the innocent son himself 
willingly offered to suffer the punisment instead of his 
guilty brother, do you think that then the father were 
righteous if he inflicted such punishment? Far be it! Or, if 
a civil government commenced to exercise such righteous- 
ness, so that innocent citizens were punished instead of 
the guilty, what would you say about such a government? 
Would anybody call it righteous or just? If officers of the 
law should reason like this: "When a crime has been 
committed, then justice must be satisfied by the infliction 
of suffering; as to the cause itself it makes no difference 
whether the guilty or some one else instead suffers; justice 



44 THE RECONCILIATION. 

is satisfied in either case" — would officers reasoning and 
acting thus be just? Far be it! That would be shocking 
injustice. But for God it would be just, would it?! Far 
be it! May we leave it to heathen people thus to think 
about their gods. But we, who have the light of God's 
word, ought to know that God is just and righteous, that 
there is "no iniquity with the Lord our God" (Deut. 
xxxii. 4; 2 Chr. xix. 7), and that the righteousness and 
justice which he enjoins on men is an expression of his own 
righteousness and justice. Neither is it ever said in the 
Bible, that God has inflicted punishment upon Christ in- 
stead of upon us. Yea, the prophet Isaiah represents it 
as a delusion, that the Jews believed that Christ was pun- 
ished by God. The prophet says: "We did esteem him 
stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted, but he was wounded 
for our trangressions, he teas bruised for our iniquities." 
[Is. Liii. 4, 5; more literally and correctly Dr. W. trans- 
lates the two last quoted sentences thus: "He was pierced 
through by our sins, he was crushed by our misdeeds"].* 
47. In the third place, the sacrifices of the Old 
Testament could not express a penal suffering instead of 
the sinner. This can be seen from the following circum- 
stances. The Old Testament offerings and sacrifices were 
partly bloodless ones, consisting of fruits and the like 
partly bloody ones, consisting of animals, such as lambs 
oxen etc. That the bloodless offerings did not express 
vicarious penal suffering we understand very well without 
any further comment. Of course, sheaves of grain, and 
other fruits of the earth could not suffer punishment. 
Hence, only the bloody offerings and sacrifices can here 

* As it would be too extensive a matter here to make any 
comments on the fifty-third of Isaiah, we refer our readers to the 
exposition of this chapter which we have published separately 
under the title, "The Man of Sorrows". [This work, also, is 
translated, and will soon be issued by the publisher of the 
treatise herewith in the hand of the reader. It is a book of 320 
12ino pages in Swedish. — J. G. P.]. 



CONCERNING THE O. T. SACRIFICES. 45 

come under consideration. These were partly such as 
had in view the reconciliation of sinners, when they had 
sinned: as the burnt offering, sin offering, and trespass 
offering, that is, the expiatory or atoning sacrifices in 
general; partly such as were intended to express a person's 
gratitude to God for help received. That these latter of- 
ferings — that is, the meat offerings, and the peace or 
thank offerings (which last-named also were bloody ones, 
Lev. iii), — did not express a vicarious penal suffering is 
easily understood; because by them it was not a question 
of atoning for sin, but of expressing gratitude for favors 
received. But from these we see directly something which 
is of the greatest importance as to the question of the 
meaning of the sacrifices: to wit, that we must never draw 
the conclusion that a sacrifice expressed penal suffering 
just because it was bloody. When, therefore, it is concluded 
as to the sin and trespass offerings, that because they were 
bloody they expressed penal sufferings, then is drawn an 
entirely too hasty conclusion. Otherwise, the same thing 
must be concluded also as to the peace or thank offerings, 
since they likewise were bloody, as we now have seen. 

48. But we need not longer tarry with this. Let us 
proceed to consider the sacrifices which were offered for 
atonement. We ask, then, if God has anywhere in his 
word explained these sacrifices so as to express a vicarious 
penal suffering. If God has explained them thus, then it 
must be so. But no; God has nowhere thus explained 
them. On the contrary, God's ordinance concerning 
these sacrifices is such, that it excludes every thought of 
vicarious penal suffering. For, in the first place, sacrifices 
were never allowed to be made for other sins than such as 
were not to be visited by death, or capital punishment. Thus, 
for instance, sins against the ten commandments were 
never to be atoned for by sacrifices. Sacrifices were never 
to be made for idolatry, sabbath breaking, adultery, etc. 
But if sacrifices were allowed to be made only for such 



46 THE RECONCILIATION. 

sins as were exempt from death, or capital punishment 
how then could any one think that the animal which was 
offered suffered the punishment of death instead of the 
offender? Why, his sin was not at all liable to be visited by 
the death penalty. — Secondly, in a case of poverty the 
atoning sin offering might consist of fine flour (Lev. v. n). 
But if the sin offering had been intended to express penal 
suffering, then it could never have consisted of flour, for 
how could offerings of flour express penal suffering? — 
Thirdly, it is written in the law (Deut. xxi. i — 9) concern- 
ing a manslayer who was not discovered, that the people 
— mark, the people — should be forgiven [literally, "aton- 
ed for," or "reconciled", vers 8] by the sacrifice of a young 
heifer. But of course that could not mean that the heifer 
suffered death instead of the people, for the people were 
not indeed guilty of the sin and had not deserved to die. 
That the heifer did not suffer death instead of the man- 
slayer, either, is evident partly from the fact that the 
atonement, or reconciliation, did not have for its object 
the manslayer, but the people, partly from the fact that in 
Num. xxxv. 31 it is expressly forbidden to take ransom 
[literally, "atonement"] for the life of a manslayer*, and 
that just on the ground that he was guilty of death. If 
the manslayer was afterwards discovered, he himself must 
die, which shows indeed that the animal sacrified was not 
considered to have suffered the penalty in his stead. 

49. Nor, finally, did the laying of hands on the 
victim (of which we read in Lev. iv. 15, 24; xvi. 21) signify 
that the penalty was transferred to the animal. This we 
can see, in the first place, from the fact that such laying 
on of hands occurred even in the case of the peace or 



* Thus the Revised Version: "Ye shall take no ransom for 
the life of a manslayer, which is guilty of death: but he shall 
surely be put to death." The Authorized Version has the less 
correct terms "satisfaction" and "inurderer". See the whole 
passage in Num. xxxv. 15—34 in the Rev. Ver. — J. 67. P. 



CONCERNING THE O. T. SACRIFICES. 47 

thank offerings, where there was no question at all of pen- 
alty (Lev. iii. 2, 8, 13); in the second place, from the fact 
that in Lev. xvith the laying on of hands is clearly repre- 
sented to be an expression of the confession of sin (verse 2 1). 
Besides - — and this is the most decisive argument — on 
the Day of Atonement the hands were not laid on the 
animal which was killed, hut on the one that was kept alive, 
as it is written: "And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon 
the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the 
iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgress- 
ions in [better, "even"] all their sins, putting them upon 
the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand 
of a fit man [or, better, "a man that is in readiness," or, 
"that is appointed"] into the wilderness: And the goat 
shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not 
inhabited [or, "a solitary land"] : and he shall let go the 
goat in the wilderness" [Lev. xvi. 21, 22). If the laying 
on of hands had been intended to symbolize a transferring 
of punishment, it could at least never have taken place on 
the goat which was to remain alive. 

50. But what then did the Old Testament sacrifices 
mean? You say, "It is not enongh, indeed, to know what 
"they did not mean." True! Let us therefore examine how 

God himself in his word explains their meaning. We will 
then first examine how they are explained in the Old Test- 
ament, and afterwards how they are explained in the 
New Testament. May God send us his light Upon his 
revealing, it depends what we are to see and understand. 

51. First, then, we notice that it is never said in the 
Old Testament that atonement, or reconciliation*, was 



* See the note on pages 5, 6, and 7, for a statement of the 
different English words, atonement, reconciliation, and propi- 
tiation, corresponding to the one Swedish word forsoning. The 
English Bible (Authorized Version) evidently uses both the 
words, atonement and reconciliation, as s} T nonymous; thus, for 
instance, the same general Hebrew word for atonement with all 



48 THE RECONCILIATION. 

effected by the death of the sacrificed animal. No; atone- 
ment was effected by the blood. And the blood is not ex- 
plained as a type of or a figurative expression for death, 
but as a type of and a figurative expression for life; as the 
Lord says in Lev. xvii. 1 1 : "The life of the flesh is in the 
blood; and I have given it to you upon the altar to make 
an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh 
an atonement for the soul." [The last clause is better 
rendered by the Revised Version: "that maketh atonement 
by reason of the life;" or, still better, according to the 
Swedish new proof- translation: "for the blood maketh 
atonement through (01% by reason of) the life which is 
therein.*] Notice that the atonement is not ascribed to 
the blood by reason of the suffering or death which the 



its various shades of meaning — kaphar, to cover, to purge or 
cleanse, then figuratively as to sin, to forgive — is rendered 
sometimes atonement, or, as a verb, to make atonement, some- 
times reconciliation, or, as a verb, to make reconciliation, or to 
reconcile. See Lev. viii. 15 (reconciliation), verse 34 (atonement); 
so also in chap. xvi. 20, reconciliation; in all the other verses, 
atonement; in Ezek. xlv. 15, 17, 20, reconciliation, or reconcile. 
The Revised Version gives, generally, atonement, but in Dan. 
ix. 24 it retains reconciliation. Both words mean really the same 
thing, as do also such renderings (of the same Hebrew word) as 
"purging", "cleansing", "forgiveness", "ransom", and the like, 
all referring to some action of God himself, or of some one act- 
ing as his representative, directed upon man or his surroundings 
on account of sin and for the purpose of restraining it 01 its effects, 
and, ultimately, of removing it entirely. In translating the one 
Swedish word (forsoning) I use the word "atonement" where the 
general Old Testament idea of considering the divine work in 
and by itself is the more prominent, but the word "reconcilia- 
tion" where the idea of the effect of the divine work on man 
is or appears to be more prominent; sometimes it seems best to 
use both words in juxtaposition. J. G. P. 

* For more information about this passage and its trans- 
lation see my translation of the Author's little treatise; "The 
Blood of Jesus: What is its significance?" §§ 6, 22 (my note 
there), and 33. J. G. P. 



CONCERNING THE O. T. SACRIFICES. 49 

shedding of it had caused, but by reason of (or through) 
the life that is or was in it. Then in verse 14 [according 
to the Swedish]: "For the life of all flesh is in its blood, and 
it constitutes its life."* Not by the shedding of the blood was 
atonement made, but by the sprinkling of the blood. But 
what did this sprinkling signify? It signified cleansing 
or purging from sin, as the apostle in the text quoted 
above says: "Almost all things are by the law purged with 
blood." This, then, is what the type which lies in the Old 
Testament sacrifices corresponds to: namely, atonement 
is made for a sinner, or a sinner's reconciliation takes place, 
by his being cleansed from sin. This is not a mere deduc- 
tion, or inference, which we ourselves have made, but it is 
just what the Bible itself teaches in definite and plain 
words, as we shall soon see. 

52. The Hebrew word which in our [Swedish] trans- 
lation of the Bible is rendered "forsona" [English: atone, 
or atone for, or make atonement for, or reconcile, or make 
reconciliation for**] properly means to cover. To atone 



* In the English Authorized Version this passage is almost 
meaningless. The Revised Version uses circumlocution, but 
gets at the idea: "For as to the life of all flesh, the blood thereof 
is all one with the life thereof" (the italics indicate here, as is al- 
ways the case with words thus printed in Bible passages, what 
words have no equivalents in the original). J. G. P. 

** The Swedish verb forsona is a clear transitive, taking 
for its object either the person or the thing. With a personal 
object (or any thing standing for a personal object, as tabernacle, 
house, land, etc.), it corresponds to reconcile, make reconciliation 
for, or, make atonement for; with the sin, guilt, or offense, as 
direct object, it corresponds to atone, atone for, make an atone- 
ment for, or, expiate. The Hebrew verb kapliar, or, as it occurs 
in the more usual form, kipper, is seldom used as a transitive 
active, but most frequently with the preposition 'al (over, upon) 
before the person for whom atonement is made, hence, literally, to 
cover over, or to cover up, the sinner or what is affected by his sin. 
The sin or offense is connected with the verb by the prepositions 
min (from), V (to, as to), 'al(over, upon),ov V ad (tlirou gh ,i n reference 



$0 THE RECONCILIATION. 

for sin should therefore most properly be translated to 
cover sin, if we could use the expression. But that it does 
not mean merely a hiding of the sin is plainly seen from 
the way the word is used in other places. When, for in- 
stance, God says in Is. xxviii. 18: "Your covenant with 
death shall be disannulled," the same Hebrew word is 
used for disannul that is used in expressing atonement for 
sins. Already from this use of the word we can surmise 
that when sins are spoken of as being covered, it does not 
mean that they are merely hidden under a covering, but 
that they are blotted out, or made void, as we blot out a 
writing by crossing over it. The same thing is expressed 
by the Lord in other words, as when in another place he 
says: "I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgres- 
sions, and, as a cloud, thy sins" (Is. xiiv. 22). In God's work 
of salvation there is really a question of blotting out sins so 
completely, that they shall no longer exist, but be entirely 
removed, as is darkness by the shining of the sun, or as is 
a cloud when it is wholly dissolved. And just in this 
consists the atonement which the sacrifices typified. The 
whole injury which Satan wrought God would bring to 
naught; he would not merely throw a cover over it, and 
then let it remain, but would wholly undo it. Yes, God be 
praised. Thus we have a complete gospel, a divine gos- 
pel, one worthy of God, a gospel that contains salvation 
for us. 

to), thus giving the meaning: to cover over the sinner from, or as to, 
Ms sin. In the English Versions this second preposition is gen- 
erally translated "as concerning", or, "as touching", or, "for" (cf. 
Lev. iv. 26, 35; v. 6, 13, 18; xix. 22). It is very interesting and 
instructive to notice how the Holy Spirit in the sacred writers 
more and more worked the word kipper into a fine deep spiritual 
meaning, so that in the later O. T. writings it is used almost 
exclusively with God as the subject and sin as the direct object, 
and evidently in the sense of to forgive, purge, and the like; and 
thus, also, it is translated in the Versions (seePs. lxv. 3; Lxxviii. 
88; Lxxix. 9; 2 Chron. xxx. 18'; Is. vi. 7; xxii. 14; xxvii. 9; Jer, 
xviii. 23; Ezek. xvi. 63), J. G. P. 



CONCERNING THE O, T. SACRIFICES. 5 1 

53. But let us proceed. Who is set forth in the first 
and foremost place as the one that atones for sins? An- 
swer: It is God. But if God is the one who makes atone- 
ment for sins, then it cannot mean that he makes atone- 
ment for or appeases himself in regard to sins. No; it must 
mean that he atones for sin, that he really blots out sins 
— exactly as it is written. Thus we read, for instance, in 
Ps. lxv. 3: "As for our transgressions, thou shalt purge 
them away" [literally, "thou wilt atone for them," or, 
"thou wilt cover them"]. And again, in Ps. Lxxviii. 3: 
"But he, being full of compassion, forgave [literally, "aton- 
ed for," or "covered"] their iniquities, and destroyed them 
not." And again, in Ps. Lxxix. 9: "Help us, O God of 
our salvation, for the glory of thy name: and deliver us, 
and purge away [literally, "atone for," or "cover over"] 
our sins, for thy name's sake." Likewise we read in Ezek. 
xvi. 62, 63, the following beautiful words: "And I will 
establish my covenant with thee; and thou shalt know 
that I am the Lord: that thou mayest remember, and be 
confounded, and never open thy mouth any more because 
of thy shame, when I am pacified toward thee for all that 
thou hast done, saith the Lord God" [the last clause liter- 
ally:" when I atone for thee for all that thou hast done, 
saith the Lord Jehovah"; of which the Rev. Version makes 
good sense in rendering: "When I have forgiven thee 
all," etc.].* Thus let us hold fast to this — for it is a 
"golden treasure" in the knowledge of God — : God is the 
one that atones and reconciles — mark well: not the one 
for whom atonement is made, or the one who is recon- 
ciled, or propitiated, but the one who makes atonement 
for sinners and for sins — for our sins. 



* In such passages our [Swedish] Versions — even the 
last proof- translation — render the word ' 'atone" by "forgive*'. 
Such rendering causes one who is unaquainted with the original 
text not fully to see how the word ' 'atone" is used in the Old 
Testament. 



52 THE RECONCILIATION. 

54. Thus we have noticed the expression "atone for 
sin/' or, "make atonement for sin" — forgive, blot out sin. 
Now let us note more particularly the other expression of 
a similar import in the Old Testament: God atones for 
sinners, or, makes atonement for sinners. For to atone, 
or to make atonement, for sinners is nothing else than to 
blot out their sins. Thus, for instance, it is said in Deut. 
xxi. 8 [according to the Hebrew] : "Make an atonement, 
Lord, for thy people Israel, whom thou hast redeemed."* 
What could it mean that God should make an atonement 
for his people? Answer: Nothing else than that he should 
blot out that sin which was clinging to the people — that 
he should cleanse and sanctify his people. Another pass- 
age where the same expression occurs is 2 Chr. xxx. 18 
and 19, where we read: "But Hezekiah prayed for them, 
saying, The good Lord pardon [literally, atone for] every 
one that prepareth his heart to seek God, the Lord God of 
his fathers, though he be not cleansed** according to the 
purification of the sanctuary" (that is, even if he be not 
purified according to the Mosaic statutes). What, then, 
did it mean, that God would make an atonement for those 
who "prepared their hearts" [better, acording to the Rev. 
Ver., "set their hearts"] to seek him, but- who were not 
purified according to the law of Moses? Answer: It meant 
that he would cleanse them from that uncleanness which 
according to the law of Moses clung to them. This, too, 
is the explanation immediately given in the next verse, 
where it is said: "And the Lord hearkened to Hezekiah, and 



* Tims also according to the Swedish new proof translation. 
The English Auth. Yer. has: "Be merciful unto," etc. The Rev. m 
Ver. has it: ' 'Forgive," etc. J. G. P. 

** As the italicized words, he be cleansed, have nothing cor- 
responding to them in the original text, they might just as well 
have been omitted from the translation; or the words atoned for, 
understood from the beginning of the sentence, might here have 
been repeated so as to have made the clause read: "though he be 
not atoned for [or, reconciled] according to," etc. J. G. P. 



CONCERNING THE O. T. SACRIFICES. 53 

healed the people," — listen: "healed," that is, sanctified 
and cleansed the people from their ceremonial and moral 
uncleanness. Well, we say it again: Let us keep it as "a 
golden treasure" in our knowledge of God, that he, God, 
is not a God who demands compensation or atonement 
for himself, but a God who himself atones for sins and 
sinners, that is, he cleanses sinners by blotting out their sins. 
55. It is, also, precisely the very same thought which 
is expressed by the sacrifices of the Old Testament. 
Through the blood of these sacrifices the priest, as the 
representative of God, was to atone for those that were 
unclean, that is, in a typical manner cleanse them from 
their sins. This is expressed also in such a way that the 
priest was said to "atone for him [the one who had sin- 
ned] from his sins" (thus literally, according to the Hebrew, 
in Lev. iv. 26; ct. verses 20, 31, and 35*.) Think what a 
remarkable expression this is: "atone a sinner from his 
sins." But how plain does it not make the meaning of the 
word, "atone," when I consider what meaning thus God 
himself puts into it: namely, to cleanse, or, to sanctify. 
Therefore, to make atonement for, or, to reconcile a sinner 
"from" sin is to cleanse him from sin, and that is the work 
of God, and not of men. But God did that then in a typ- 
ical or figurative way through the priest and the blood of 
the sacrifices. Just as in Ezek. xvi. 63 it is said (accord- 
ing to the original, as we have seen) that God atones for 
the sinner for all his sins, so in Lev. v. 18 it is said that 
the priest shall atone for the sinner "concerning the thing 
wherein he erred" [Revised Version]. It was the work of 
God even when it was done by the priest. But by the fact 
that God did it through the priest, he wished to give his 
people a prophetic intimation of the true priest, the only 



* The English Versions translate the Hebrew preposition 
which corresponds to 'from" (mih, contracted into mi' or m') by 
"as concerning/' or, "as touching/' See note on pages 49 and 
50. J, G. P. 



54 THE RECONCILIATION. 

begotten Son of God, who, as the representative of God, 
should in truth by his own blood atone for, or cleanse, sin- 
ners from their sins. 

56. This significance of the sacrifices, that they 
should cleanse from sin, we find with special clearness set 
forth in the great sacrifice on the day of atonement, which 
sacrifice was the sum of all the sacrifices that were offered 
for sin. Let us therefore more clearly consider the 
description of this sacrifice as we read it in Lev. xvi. In 
the first place, Aaron was to make an atonement for him- 
self and for his house by the blood of a sacrificed bullock 
and by the sacrifice of a ram (verses 3, 6, 11), that is, he 
should cleanse himself and his house from sin, that he 
might afterwards be fitted to make atonement for the 
people. After that he was to take two goats, and kill one 
of them as a sin offering for the people, but present the 
other one alive before the Lord (verse 10). Then first 
with the blood of the bullock, afterwards with the blood 
of the killed goat, he was to enter into "the holy place 
within the veil, before the mercy-seat," and sprinkle it 
(the blood) upon the mercy-seat and before the mercy- 
seat. When he had come out from the inner holy place, 
then he was, in like manner, to sprinkle the blood upon 
the tabernacle (the outer holy place), and particularly 
upon the altar there (verses 14 — 19). And mark, God 
calls these actions "to make atonement for the holy place," 
"to make atonement for the tabernacle/' and "to make atone' 
ment for the altar." But how does he explain this atone- 
ment? Is it explained in such a way, that God should 
thereby become gracious toward the holy place, the tab- 
ernacle, and the altar? No; but this is what is said in verse 
16: "And he [Aaron, the high priest] shall make an atone- 
ment for the holy place, because of* the uncleanness of the 
children of Israel, and because of* their transgressions in 

* Instead of the words "because of" in the English Versions 



CONCERNING THE O. T. SACRIFICES. 55 

all their sins." But if we wish to know what it means to 
make an atonement for the holy place "from" sins [that 
is, "for", or, "as to", or, "because of" sins], then we are 
plainly told, in the 19th verse, that it means to iS cleanse 
it, and hallow it from the uncleanness of the children of 
Israel." Some one, objecting, may say: "But the holy 
place could not really have any sins from which it needed 
to be cleansed," Answer: The cleansing of the taber- 
nacle was a type of the cleansing of the people. There- 
fore, also, it is said that the holy place, the tabernacle, 
and the altar should be cleansed "from" [thus literally; 
the Versions have it: "because of] "the transgressions of 
the children of Israel" (verse 16). Here, then, not a word 
is said about appeasing, or propitiating, or reconciling 
God. No; all had for its aim the blotting out of sins and 
the cleansing of the sinner. It is — we repeat it again with 
joy — it is God, the ever faithful Jehovah, the God of Israel, 
who in the sacrifices of atonement reveals himself as the one 
who atones for, or cleanses, his sinful people from all their 
sins.* 



the Hebrew has "from" (the preposition min, as observed in 
previous notes). J. G. P. 

* In the Old Testament the expression "to atone for sin" is 
used also with the meaning: "to procure the forgiveness of sins 
by intercession." Thus Moses, for instance, speaks to the people 
who had worshiped the golden calf: "Ye have sinned a great sin: 
and 7ioio I will go up unto the Lord; per adventure I shall make an 
atonement for your sin. And Moses returned unto the Lord, and 
said, 'Oh, this people have sinned a great sin .... Yet now, if 
thou wilt forgive their sin — ; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, 
out of thy book which thou hast written'" (Ex. xxxii. 30 — 32). Of 
such an atonement of sin the apostle James speaks in chap v. 14 
and 15, where he says: "Is any sick among you? let him call for 
the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing 
him with oil in the name of the Lord: and the prayer of faith 
shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he 
have committed sins they shall be forgiven him." Hence, this is 
something which is continually taking place in the Christian 



56 THE RECONCILIATION. 

57. O how beautifully and sweetly has not God, in 
that wonderful sacrifice of atonement, set forth what sig- 
nificance he meant there should be in that which he called 
atonement! But in order that we may be still more cer- 
tain, let us look also at the last part of this expiatory 
sacrifice, or the treatment of the live goat. This goat was 
to be presented alive before God, and atonement he made 
"for him" [thus literally and truly in vers 10 of Lev. xvi. 
The rendering of the phrase in the Engl. Rev. Ver. is cor- 
rect, and the only rendering that is admissible, "for" de- 
noting the direct object of the atonement, here as every- 
where else]. What does it mean that atonement should 
be made for the goat? Just think what a remarkable ex- 
pression: the goat should be atoned for. That can indeed 
never mean that God should be appeased, or propitiated, 
or reconciled. No; "atone for" means here the same 
thing as at other places, to wit, make holy, sanctify, on 
cleanse. That atonement should be made for the goat 
meant, therefore, that in a typical or symbolical way he 
should be santified [separated, or dedicated] for the pur- 
pose of carrying off the sins of the people. For we read in 
verse 21 that the sins of the people were to be confessed 
over the live goat; and then that goat was to be sent out 
into the wilderness, and on himself carry away all the ini- 
quities of the children of Israel into the wilderness^ Think 
what a lifelike painting! Let us repeat it once more: the 
thing purposed by God in the atonement was the cleansing 
of the people by the taking away of their sins. And this did 
God do through the high priest in a symbolical manner by 
the sacrifice. Therefore, finally, in verse 30 it is said, as 
a complete explanation of this great sacrificial act: "For 
on this day shall atonement be made for you, to cleanse you; 



church, to wit, that one in this way atones for the sins of an- 
other. But it is evident that this is quite a different thing from 
that which is spoken of God when it is said that he atones for 
sin. 



CONCERNING THE O. T. SACRIFICES. 57 

from all your sins shall you be clean before the Lord."* 

Hear, and hear it over again: "atonement made for you" 
— not for God; — your reconciliation — not the reconcilia- 
tion of God; — so that "ye shall be cleansed from all your 
sins" — not that God should be appeased from all his 
wrath. Thus reads God's own clear explanation, and that 
must be reliable. Praise be to God for ever. 

58. Consequently, from the Old Testament itself we 
obtain the most definite and the most reliable explanation 
of the significance of the atoning or expiatory sacrifices, 
and what kind of atonement was accomplished by them. 
From this explanation we have found: t. that the atone- 
ment which was typified by the sacrifices never aimed at 
appeasing or compensating God by means of vicarious 
penal suffering; 2. that, for this reason, God is never in 
the law of sacrifices mentioned as the object of the atone- 
ment;** 3. that the atonement typified by the sacrifices 

* Thus the Revised Version, which is substantially like the 
Swedish: "On that day your atonement [or, reconciliation] is 
made, so that ye shall be cleansed/' etc. The Auth. Version 
needlessly inserts "t7ie priest" in the first clause, and makes that 
clause active instead of passive. — J. G. P. 

** Sometimes men have tried to make out that the Script- 
ural expression, "to atone for sins/' properly means: "to make 
atonement or satisfaction unto God in regard to sins/' or, "to 
make God propitious (or, to conciliate God) in regard to sins." 
But how unbiblical this idea is can be seen from such passages 
as, for instance, Lev. x. 17, where mention is made of making 
"atonement for the sins of men before the Lord," which accord- 
ingly should mean : making atonement or satisfaction unto the 
Lord before the Lord in regard to the sins of men! — or making 
the Lord propitious before the Lord, or conciliating the Lord 
before the Lord, etc. ! Likewise from such passages as, for in- 
stance, the one quoted above, Lev. iv. 26, where it is said that 
atonement should be made for a sinner "as concerning his sin" 
[literally, "from his sin"]. What place in such an expression 
has the thought of making atonement or satisfaction unto God, 
or of making God propitious, or of conciliating God in regard to 
sin?! [What meaning could there be in an "explanation" like 



58 THE RECONCILIATION. 

consisted in the taking away of sins, and the cleansing of 
sinners before God; 4. that, therefore, always sinners or 
their sins are set forth as the objects of the atonement; 5. 
that God is spoken of as the one from whom the atone- 
ment proceeds. Noticing carefully this explanation of the 
atonement by the Old Testament itself, who cannot then 
see how one and the same great divine thought runs 
through all the redemption works of God: to wit, man — 
man, deceived by the cunning of Satan — man, gone 
astray and lost in sin — man, wandering from and hostile 
towards God — man is to be saved from sin; God wills 
it, for he is love. God is the one who is to accomplish 
this; he alone is able to do it — he, God, the eternally 
unchangeable and faithful God. O my soul, sink down, 
sink deep down into this thought. The deeper you sink 
down into it, the more it will lift you up: up — up to the 
eternally faithful and righteous God, the God with a 



this: "The priest should make God propitious in regard to sin for 
the sinner from his sin"? On the other hand, how clear and grand 
is not the meaning according to God's own explanation of the 
atonement by the sacrifices: The priest should on behalf of God 
cleanse the sinner from his sin; or, in other words, by accepting 
the sacrifice which the sinner brought, who thereby expressed his 
repentance and confession of sins, and his devotion to God, the 
priest should give assurance that the sinner, thus sacrificing, had 
his sins blotted out. — J. G. P.]. And besides this, please notice 
that when the Old Testament writers mean to say "appease any 
one," or, "pacify the wrath of any one," then they express them- 
selves just as they mean. Thus Jacob says in Gen. xxxii. 20: "1 
will appease him (Esau) with the present," etc. There, to be most 
accurate, the words read thus: "I will cover his (Esau's) face," 
etc. In Prov. xvi. 14 it is said: "The wrath of a king is as mes- 
sengers of death: but a wise man will pacify it." [See verse 6 in the 
same chap, for the general deep spiritual meaning of the word 
"purged," literally, "atoned for." — J. G. P.] Hence, "to appease 
Esau," and "to pacify the wrath of a king," this indeed does the 
Bible say. But "to appease God." that it nowhere says, and 
why? 



THE SACRIFICES ACCORDING TO THE N. T. 59 

father's heart greater than all fathers' hearts in heaven 
or on earth. 

59. But what the New Testament, says concerning 
the sacrifices we will reserve for the next chapter. God, 
our Father in heaven, take away all veils from our eyes 
and all deceit out of our hearts, that we may be fitted to 
look into the endless riches of thy truth and grace, as 
they are in Christ Jesus, our Lord. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Concerning the Sacrifices according to the New Testament. 

60. "But now once in the end of the world [or, ages] 
hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself 9 ' 

(Heb. ix. 26). In the preceding chapter we have seen 
how the Old Testament explains the sacrifices which were 
appointed by the law of Moses; and we are now to exam- 
ine if, and how, the New Testament explains them. What 
have the apostles seen in the sacrifices of the Old Testa- 
ment, and how have they, in their New Testament writ- 
ings, applied the doctrines which they found in them? — 
behold, these are questions which indeed must be of great 
importance to us. It might, perhaps, be so that the 
apostles through the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit 
saw a greater and deeper significance in the sacrifices 
than Moses and the prophets could have seen. Let us 
therefore conscientiously search into this matter. 

61. As we read John xi. 55 we find a little word 
which at first seems insignificant, but which on closer 
notice is forthwith fitted to throw light on the sacrifices. 
This is what there is said: "The Jews' passover was at 
hand; and many went out of the country up to Jerusalem 
before the passover, to purify themselves." Mark the 
little word "purify" themselves (or, as the expression of 



6o THE RECONCILIATION. 

the evangelist most properly means, "sanctify" them- 
selves). He that would approach the Lord must be clean 
(Gen. xxxv. 2). When, for instance, the children of Israel 
were to appear before God at Sinai, God said to Moses: 
"Go unto the people, and sanctify* them to-day and to- 
morrow, and let them wash their clothes . . . And Moses 
went down from the mount unto the people, and sanctified 
the people" (Ex. xix. 10, 14). If any one had become 
unclean according to the Mosaic statutes, he must first 
purify himself before he could eat the paschal lamb before 
the Lord. The evangelist means to say that, for this 
reason, many such as were "unclean" went up to Jerusalem 
somewhat in advance of the passover feast itself, in order 
that they might have time to purify, or sanctify, themselves 
before the feast proper commenced. Such purifications 
were done partly by washing, and partly by sacrifices 
Consequently, the meaning of the sacrifices according to 
this Scripture passage was that they were to purify, or 
sanctify, those who in some way were unclean according 
to the law of Moses. 

62. In Heb. ii. 17 and 18 we read the following 
words: "In all things it behoved him [that is, Christ] to be 
made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful 
and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make 
reconciliation [the Revised Ver. has "propitiation"] for 
the sins of the people. For in that he himself hath suffered 
being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted." 
There is no doubt that the apostle in these words refers 
to the sacrifices of the Old Testament whose typical 
significance he sees fulfilled in Christ. He, Christ, by 
being made like unto his brethren, and by his own tempta- 
tions and sufferings, was to become a faithful highpriest 
for them who are tempted and suffer. And his work as 



* In this passage the Septuagint [the Greek translation of the 
Old Testament] uses the same Greek word that is used in John 
xi. 55, and which in our versions is rendered "purify." 



THE SACRIFICES ACCORDING TO THE N. T. 6l 

high priest was to make propitiation for the sins of the 
people. The apostle does not say, "to propitiate God," 
but, "to make propitiation for the sins of the people," 
precisely as in the Old Testament it was said of the sig- 
nificance of the sacrifices. But how was this to be done? 
We can understand that from the type. As the high 
priest, during the times of the Old Testament, in a typical 
manner made atonement for sins by sacrifices, which act 
was explained to mean that he sanctified and cleansed 
sinners from their sins; so Christ, as the true high priest, 
giving himself up for a sacrifice, was in truth and reality, 
by means of his blood, to cleanse sinners from all their 
sins, and to present them in the sight of God holy and 
righteous, not having spot or wrinkle. As John says: 
"The blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin" 
(i John i. 7). But to cleanse is to cleanse, or purify, and 
nothing else. Perfect purity from sin — for this the high 
priests of the Old Testament were groping with their sacri- 
fices. But they never grasped or reached it. The blood 
of Jesus, however, — - it really cleanses from all sin; and 
when once all his work shall have been consummated, 
then there shall stand around his throne a great multitude, 
which no man can number, a multitude of human beings 
pure and holy like himself. And were you to ask how 
they have become so pure, they would answer that they 
"washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of 
the Lamb" (Rev. vii. 14). Mark, mark, not that they by 
the blood of Jesus have appeased God; no, but that they in 
the blood of Jesus have washed their robes. Yea, perhaps 
you yourself will stand there among that multitude — 
will you? 

63. But especially in the ninth and tenth chapters 
of the epistle to the Hebrews it is permitted us to look 
more deeply into the mystery of the Old Testament sacri- 
fices in the light of the New Testament. After the apostle 
has, in the beginning of the ninth chapter, described the 



62 THE RECONCILIATION. 

sanctuary, and has shown that the Old Testament sacrifices 
never could make them that did the service perfect, as 
pertaining to the conscience, then he adds: "But when 
Christ came as a high priest of the good things to come, he 
entered in through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, 
one not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation, 
nor yet through the blood of goats and calves, but through 
his own blood, once for all into the holy place, having ob- 
tained eternal redemption" (verses n and 12*). In the 
blood of the Old Testament sacrifices there was never any 
real deliverance from sins. The high priests went again 
and again into the holy place with the blood of goats and 
of calves; but they never found the sought-for redemption 
or deliverance. But in the blood of Jesus redemption is 
found from all sin forever. The blood of Jesus cleanses 
really from all sin; and just therein the redemption con- 
sists — real deliverance from sin. 

64. But let us now hear how the apostle more de- 
finitely explains the matter. In verses 13 and 14 (of Heb. 
ix.) he says: "For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the 
ashes of a heifer sprinkling them that have been defiled, 
sanctify unto the cleanness of the flesh: how much more 
shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit of- 
fered himself without blemish unto God, cleanse your con- 
science from dead works to serve the living God?" [Revised 
Version]. What was it the apostle said? Here, indeed, it 
behooves us, as it were, to spell and syllabify each word. 
Because we are like children who from the beginning have 
acquired the habit of reading carelessly, and for whom 
there is no other help than to begin to spell out the words 
as if they never before had seen a book. What, then, 
according to the idea of the apostle, were the sacrifices of 

* Translated from the Author's (P. W.'s) Swedish render- 
ing, in which it appears that the clauses and the sentence as a 
whole are more plainly constructed than in either of the English 
Versions. — J. G. P. 



THE SACRIFICES ACCORDING TO THE N. T. 63 

goats and oxen meant to do? Answer: To appease God? 
No; but to sanctify the unclean unto an outward cleanness. 

To effect any spiritual cleansing or to make the worship- 
pers perfect as touching the conscience, that they could 
not do (verse 9). "For the law made nothing perfect" 
(Heb. vii. 19). But the sacrifices of the Old Testament 
were only types. In the New Testament there is a better 
sacrificial blood, the blood of Jesus Christ, who through 
the eternal Spirit has offered himself unto God; and what 
was its significance according to the idea af the apostle? 
Did he say: "How much more, then, shall the blood of 
Christ appease God, so that again it may be possible for 
him to be gracious unto us"? No; but he did say this: 
"'How much more shall the blood of Christ cleanse your 
conscience, from dead works to serve the living God/' 
Hence, here also we have the same doctrine, the same 
blessed gospel of God. To cleanse — to cleanse from 
sin, that is the power of the sacrificial blood in the New 
Testament. The sacred blood of Jesus cleanses from sins 
"though they be red like crimson." 

65. Further on in the same chapter the apostle shows 
how almost all things in the old Covenant are purged with 
blood, so that without shedding of blood there is no re- 
mission of sin (of which matter we have previously spoken), 
and then he adds (verse 23): "It was therefore necessary 
that the patterns [copies] of the things in the heavens 
should be purified with these [viz., Old Testament sacri- 
fices] ; but fhe heavenly things themselves with better sacri- 
fices than these/' Hence, according to this, what sig- 
nificance does the apostle see in the sacrifices of the Old 
Testament? Answer: That they were to purify, or cleanse, 
the typical sanctuary. And this, also, is precisely what is 
written in Lev. xvi., as we saw in our preceding chapter. 
But better sacrifices, namely Christ's, were necessary to 
cleanse "the heavenly things themselves," that is, the 
heavenly sanctuary. Whatever the apostle may mean by 



64 THE RECONCILIATION. 

the heavenly sanctuary — yet surely we must see that he 
sets forth the meaning of the sacrifices to be that of cleans- 
ing. And in one of the following verses he explains this 
cleansing as meaning that Christ once for all now at the 
end of the ages has been manifested "to put away sin by 
the sacrifice of himself" (verse 26). In verse 28 he repeats 
the same thought, saying: "Christ was once offered to 
bear [that is, for the purpose of bearing or taking away] 
the sins of many," Thus what in other places is called 
atonement for sins through sacrifices, that is here called a 
putting away* of sins, or a bearing them away. But to put 
away or bear sins is really to take them away, not to throw 
a covering over them, that God may not see them although 
they remain; no, but it means to put them away, to re- 
move them, and present before God those who heretofore 
were sinners as now truly holy and cleansed from all evil. 
And this is the work of God, the work which he himself in 
Christ carries out. This, too, is the essence of the atone- 
ment as typified in the sacrifices. With any thing less 
neither God can be satisfied nor man be happy. 

66. But we pass on to the tenth chapter. There the 
apostle says: "For the law having a shadow of good things 
to come, and not the very image [standard, or essence] of 
the things, can never with those sacrifices which they [the 
Old Testament worshippers] offered year by year con- 
tinually make the comers thereunto perfect For then 
would they [the sacrifices] not have ceased to be offered? 
because that the worshippers once purged should have had 
no more conscience of sins" (verses 1 and 2). Hence, 

* To show what meaning lies in this expression of the 
apostle ( "put aicay," in verse 26), we will here remark that it is 
the same word which the apostle uses in Heb. vii. 18, where he 
says: "For there is verily a disannulling of the commandment 
going before for the weakness and unprofitableness thereof" — 
[these two passages (Heb. vii. 18 and ix. 26) being the only ones 
in the New Test where the word occurs as a noun ; as a verb it 
occurs in several, as e. g, 1 Cor. i, 19, Gal. ii, 21, iii. 15, — J. G. P.] 



THE SACRIFICES ACCORDING TO THE N. T. 65 

what significance did the apostle see in the sacrifices? An- 
swer: That of perfecting or perfectly cleansing sinners from 
Sin. But this the sacrifices of the Old Covenant could not 
do. They could represent sins as taken away, but could not 
take them away. Wherefore they really came to mean 
rather a yearly remembrance of sins than a blotting out of 
them (verse 3). They could, indeed, as we have seen 
before, effect a cleanness of the flesh (Heb. ix. 13), but 
they could not effect a real, spiritual cleansing or deliver- 
ance from sin. "For," the apostle adds, "it is not possible 
that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins" 
(verse 4). Listen, here, consequently, we have it again: 
not to appease God, but to take away sins — that was the 
question. Not to throw a covering over the sins, and 
then let them remain; but to take them away — that was 
the atonement-idea which lay in the sacrifices. Next, the 
apostle quotes the words of the Messiah in Ps. xl: "Lo, I 
come (in the volume of the book it is written of me) to do 
thy will, O God." And he, the apostle, adds: "By the 
which will [or> in consequence of which will} we are sancti- 
fied through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for 
all" (verse 10). What, again, does the apostle here say? 
"By which will" — whose will? Answer: God's will. And 
"we," says the apostle — who, what "we"? Does he mean 
the world? Why, no; he did not write to the world, but to 
the believers, such as were chosen out of the world. And 
what had taken place by (that is, in consequence of) that 
will of God? Answer: That Christ had come into the world, 
and, by the offering of himself once for all, had sanctified 
those who believed in him. Hearken, here it is yet once more: 
to sanctify sinners, really to cleanse them from sin, that it 
was which the oft-repeated sacrifices of the Old Testament 
were indeed able to typify, but never to effect; but that is 
just what the sacrifice of Christ, once for all made and 
never to be repeated, does not typify, but does really ac- 
complish in all them that believe in him. 



66 THE RECONCILIATION. 

67. But the apostle in continuing begins, as it were, 
over again, in order to impress the matter more thoroughly, 
when he adds: "And every priest standeth daily ministering 
and offering often times the same sacrifices, which can 
never take away sins" (verse 11). Hear, there you find 
again what the question is about — not to render payment 
to God, but to take away sins. And the apostle uses a 
word [jieri-elein, to remove or carry away round about or 
on all sides] which indicates that we are on all sides 
surrounded by sins, which entirely enclose us as the walls 
of a prison. Then he adds: "But this man" (that is Christ), 
after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down 
on the right hand of God; from henceforth expecting till his 
enemies be made his footstool" (verses 12 and 13). As 
though the apostle would say: He needs not to come 
again, in order to renew or repeat his sacrifice, as the priests 
of the Old Covenant did. "For," he adds, "by one offer- 
ing" — not by a multitude of offerings — "he hath per- 
fected for ever them that are sanctified" (verse 14). Con- 
sequently, once more: to perfect, to sanctify — that was 
the aim and object of the sacrifices, of the Old Testament 
sacrifices and of Christ's sacrifice. That the apostle so 
ceaselessly repeats the same thing shows how great an em- 
phasis he has put thereon. The Old Testament had many 
offerings, yet these could never make any one perfect. 
The New Testament has only one offering, and by that, 
says the apostle, the Lord has "perfected for ever them 
that are sanctified." The high priest in the Old Testa- 
ment, when he had sanctified the people, could never say: 
"I have now by this offering perfected for ever the sanc- 
tified." No; after a little while the sacrifice had to be 
done over again. But the sacrifice of Christ extends in its 
effects over all time. All who hitherto have been sancti- 
fied have been perfected by this offering. But what it 
hitherto has accomplished, it will also henceforth accom- 
plish. It never needs to be repeated, but one and the 



THE SACRIFICES ACCORDING TO TILE N. T. 67 

same sacrifice shall continually until the end of days — 
yea, throughout ages to come — perfect all them that are 
sanctified by faith in Jesus (Acts. xxvi. 18). 

68. To the sacrifices of the Old Testament also the 
apostle John has reference when he says that Christ is the 
propitiation for our sins. His exact words are these: 
"My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye 
sin not And if any man sin, we have an advocate [or, a 
helper] with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and he 
is the propitiation for our sins: and not for our's only, but 
also for the sins of the whole world" (i John ii. i and 2). 
For the apostle it was an important matter, that the believ- 
ers should not sin. But if it so happened that any one 
sinned, he would not turn him away from the mercy-seat, 
or turn him over to death or the devil. No; God forbid. 
On the contrary, he directs the attention of such a one to 
the fact that, with the Father in heaven, or at the right 
hand of the Father in heaven, he has a helper to whom he 
may turn. The apostle uses here a word about Christ 
[parakletos'] which properly means "one called or sent 
for," that is, one that is sent for or called to the help or 
assistance of any one in whatever case it may be. The 
same word is used also of the Holy Ghost, and is then 
commonly translated "Comforter" (John xiv. 16, 26; xv. 
26; xvi. 7). Therefore, if you have sinned, do not think 
this way: "Now all hope is gone, and I must despair;" 
but make haste to this your exalted Helper, Jesus, who is 
with the Father. He can help you, for "he is righteous," 
the apostle says; "and he is the propitiation for the whole 
world" [thus correctly rendered by the Revised Version]. 
If he himself were a sinner, he could not help sinners; but 
now he is righteous, as God is righteous, wherefore he is 
the right man for sinners to go to. Think what a com- 
forting representation this is of true righteousness. 

69, "And he is the propitiation for our sins'" says the 
apostle, "and not for our's [the believers'] only, but also 



68 THE RECONCILIATION. 

for the whole world." Mark the words. They do not 
say: "He has paid, or purchased a propitiation, for our 
sins." No, it is not thus written, and therefore no one 
ought to read it (or understand it) as if it were thus written. 
Consequently, what here is written is this: "He is the 
propitiation." Further, it is not written: "This or that work 
of Jesus is the propitiation." It is not written: "His suf- 
ferings and death constitute the propitiation." No, the 
words do not say so, and therefore no one ought to read 
(or understand) them as if they did say so. No; but this 
they say: "He is the propitiation" — he, he himself in his 
own person. But what does that mean? Let us see. We 
can learn the meaning of this from other similar express- 
ions. In John xi. 25 the Lord says of himself: "/ am the 
resurrection, and the life." Now, what does that mean? 
Answer: Why, of course, that he as the divine Saviour is 
the one that raises the dead, and quickens them to life. 
David often says of God: "He is my peace," "my salva- 
tion," "my consolation," etc., that is, he is the one that 
gives me peace, saves me, and consoles me. Well, then, 
neither is it now difficult to understand what it means 
that he is the propitiation. He as the divine Saviour is 
that person who through his blood "propitiates sinners from 
their sins" (if we could use such an expression), that is, 
he propitiates sinners so that they get rid of their sins, he 
cleanses and sanctifies them from their sins. And this is 
indeed just what a sinner needs. O think how beautiful 
and comforting the reference of the apostle is, when he 
refers the one who sins to such a Saviour who really sanc- 
tifies and cleanses sinners from all sins — a really right- 
eous and divine Saviour, who at the same time is a true 
and real man. Therefore, thou sorrowing and troubled 
soul, thou who hast sinned, and art distressed, and knowest 
not what to do, remember that Jesus is the propitiation, 
the great propitiatory sacrifice for the whole world, he 
whose blood cleanses from all sins. Go to him, and he 



THE SACRIFICES ACCORDING TO THE N. T. 69 

will help you out of your sin. Trust yourself wholly unto 
him. He will forgive you all, and cleanse you from all 
your wrong-doing. 

70. The apostle uses the same manner of expression 
when he says in another place: "Herein is love, not that 
we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be 
the propitiation for our sins" (i John iv. to). Mark the 
words again — word for word. Foremost the apostle puts 
love — not our love, but God's, — that love he puts at 
head of the atonement. There everything begins: "God 
is love" (verse 8). Who were they whom God loved? 
Answer: "us," the apostle says; and by that little word 
he means himself and those to whom he wrote. Hence, 
his words in this passage have reference to believers. But 
that which he here says concerning them, is true also con- 
cerning the world, as we see Irom other passages, for 
instance John iii. 16: "God so loved the world." But what, 
then, did God do on account of this his love? Answer: 
"He sent his Son to be a propitiation as concerning our 
sins" [thus literally rendered], and "as concerning the sins 
of the whole world" (i John ii. 2 [the last phrase of which 
verse, more correctly rendered, says simply: "as concern- 
ing the whole world"]). There you see, consequently, 
how the apostle speaks of God, not as one who for himself 
demands satisfaction, but as one who sarifices his Son, in 
order that he may atone for, that is, blot out, our sins, and 
make good the injury which we have entailed upon our- 
selves and suffered through the fall. 

71. Hence, also in the New Testament there is the 
same explanation of the sacrifices. And how could it be 
possible that God should contradict himself? Mark how 
everything in this matter aims at this: to eliminate or 
clear out from humanity that deadly poison — sin — which 
satan has injected into us, and to restore us unto God so 
thoroughly clean and holy as he originally had created 
us. And this through the blood of Christ, by making us 



70 THE RECONCILIATION. 

partakers of the life of Christ, as the apostle John says: 
"The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all 
sin" (t John i. 7). The blood of Christ is a poison for 
sin. As sin has been for us a poison causing our death, 
so the blood of Christ is for sin a poison causing its death 
and our quickening in righteousness. O my soul, rest 
and breathe here. Take deep breaths of this heavenly air, 
for great is your God, and great are his works. Praise be 
to God for ever for his unspeakable gift. 



CHAPTER V. 

Man and the World as Objects of the Reconciliation, or 
the Atonement. 

72. "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto 
himself" (2 Cor. v. 19). These words of the apostle do 
most briefly, yet very clearly and completely, set forth the 
very essence of the atonement, or the reconciliation. When 
we started to speak of the reconciliation [§§7 and 11], we 
raised the question if it was God or man or both parties, 
who was or were to be reconciled. Now we have searched 
through the Bible, and have found that it does not in a 
single place — either in the Old or the New Testament — 
speak of God as being reconciled. But if the Bible, the 
principal contents of which are all about reconciliation, 
never speaks of reconciling God, then neither ought we to 
speak thereof. For the apostle Peter says: "If any man 
speak, let him speak as the oracles of God" (1 Pet. iv. 11). 
The love of God had not been diminished through man's 
sin, so that it needed to be improved, increased or re- 
stored; nor could, by any means, God's hatred of sin be 
done away with, for if he did not hate sin, he would not 
be righteous; neither could God's displeasure to those who 
live in sin be done away with, because even yet, this very 



MAN AND THE WORLD AS OBJECTS. 7 1 

day, God is displeased with all who live in sin. No change 
has taken place in him. He remains the same, the one 
he is; with him there is "no variableness, neither shadow 
of turning." He is the eternally faithful, unchangeable 
God, whose name is Jehovah (i. e. "I am that I am"). 

73. On the contrary, man needed to be reconciled 
to God. But before we proceed further to speak of this, 
we will here remark that the Bible has two different terms 
to express the idea of atonement, or reconciliation. One 
of these terms is used to express what is generally trans- 
lated "atone for sin" [Swedish, u forsonasynd"~\ or "atone 
for sinners from (or, as to) their sins" [Swedish, "forsona 
syndare fran deras synder""] , that is, blot out sin, or cleanse 
and sanctify sinners from their sins.* Concerning this 
we have in the preceding two chapters spoken at large. 
The other term is used to express what is generally trans- 
lated "reconcile sinners to God" [Swedish, "forsona syn- 
dare med Gud"**\\ . The meaning of this word ("recon- 

* The Swedish transitive verb "forsona" takes as direct 
object either the person or the thing; when both kinds of objects 
are connected with the verb, the object of the thing is preceded 
by the preposition "fran" (from), just as is the case with the 
English verb cleanse — e. g. cleanse any one from any thing. As 
to the corresponding Bible terms see my note to § 52. — J. G. P. 

** It is to be noticed that the one Swedish word "forsona" 
must be translated by different words in English: in expressions 
like the above first mentioned we must say ' 'atone for sin," and 
"atone for sinners;" but in expressions like the second (*". e. the 
one to which this note is attached) we must say "reconcile sin- 
ners to God." A great deal of queer, mystifying English-Amer- 
ican theology has been grounded on these different ways of 
expressing really the same thing. To "atone (or, make atone- 
ment) for sin" is, in biblical sense and language, to blot out or 
purge away sin; to "atone (or, make atonement) for sinners" is to 
purge or cleanse sinners morally and spiritually; — the one is 
really cleansing (or removing) sin from sinners, the other is 
cleansing sinners from their sins, and what more is done or can 
be done when sinners are reconciled, that is, changed from a state 
of mind in sin to a state of mind in holiness? Plainly, it is all the 



72 THE RECONCILIATION. 

rile") is, properly, to bring any one into a different, into a 
right, relation to any one. Just as when the first of these 
expressions is used, it is never said, "atone (or, make 
atonement) for God or for the wrath of God," so when the 
second of these expressions is used, it is never said, "re- 
concile God to sinners," but always, "reconcile sinners to 
God." This we can also easily understand. God had 
never come into any wrong relation to men, and therefore 
he never needed to be brought again into a right relation 
to them. On the contrary, men had come into a wrong 
relation to God, and they therefore needed to be brought 
again into a right relation to him. On this depended their 
happiness, and their deliverance from all the suffering 
which their apostasy had caused. 

74. Behold here an illustration. If an arm be wrested 
out of joint, and thereby comes into a wrong relation to 
the body, it becomes useless for the work for which it was 
created, and must suffer much pain. For it is so created 
that it cannot be well, neither can it accomplish its work, 
without being in a right relation to the body. If it is to 
be healed, and to be freed from pain, and fitted for its 
work, it must be brought again into a right relation to the 
body. This is not a change that is to take place in the 
body; no, but the change that must take place is a change 
in and with the arm. When it again comes into a right 
relation to the body, then it is fitted for its work and feels 
well. Behold, in a similar manner man has through sin 
come into a wrong relation to God, has thereby become 
incapacitated for all the good whereunto he was created, 
and has fallen under the dominion of death. Man has 
been so created that he cannot be happy without God. 
"In him we live, and move, and have our being/' says the 
apostle (Acts xvii. 28). To be, in a spiritual sense, severed 

same thing, the same work, and the same result, only viewed 
as to or under different aspects. More on these terms is said in 
my notes to §§ 1 and 51. — J. G. P. 



MAN AND THE WORLD AS OBJECTS. 73 

from him is therefore death and unhappiness — a terrible 
unhappiness. If the sinner is to be saved at all, his sal- 
vation depends on his coming again into a right relation 
to the God who has given him his life. This is reconcili- 
ation, a necessary reconciliation, and the reconciliation of 
which the New Testament speaks: the reconciliation of 
man to God, not the reconciliation of God to man. 

75. The Scriptures testify that man by nature, as 
estranged from God, is carnal. It is not the Spirit of 
God that fills and rules him, but the flesh, that is, the old 
inherited Adamic nature. But "the carnal mind" ["the 
*mind of the flesh," according to the Rev. Vers.] "is en- 
mity against God," says Paul (Rom. viii. 7). That is the 
chief trouble; not this or that transgression or misdeed; 
nay, but the very mind, the entire nature, as inherited from 
Adam, with all its quality, state, and condition, is enmity 
against God: "for it [i. e., this mind] is not subject to the 
law of God, neither indeed can it be." Of the same thing 
the apostle speaks in Col. i. 21, where he says to the 
Christians: "Ye were sometime alienated and enemies 
in your mind by wicked works."* "The wicked [or ewY] 
works" of the ungodly are never isolated; they are ex- 
pressions of the wicked, or evil, mind. And the evil mind 
is enmity against God. This the natural man will never 
admit. Even though he may admit that now and then in 
his life and in his works he may be at fault or be mistaken, 
still he will hold that in the depths of his heart he is good. 
But no, says the apostle, the natural mind itself in man is 
enmity against God. It is a terrible judgment which the 
apostle by these words pronounces upon all that bears 
the name of man (as he is by nature); but it is a true 
judgment. 

* The last part of this verse is more literally and correctly 
rendered by the author (P. W.), according to the Greek: "ene- 
mies by [or, "through", or, "as to'] your mind in wicked works." 
- J. G. P. 



74 THE RECONCILIATION. 

76. Look at history as given in the Bible. As soon 
as Adam and Eve had transgressed against God they be- 
came alienated in heart from him, averse to him, and fled 
and hid themselves from him. This mind was transmitted 
as a spiritual inheritance to all their posterity. God has 
never done any evil or wrong to the world, nothing but 
good; but still the world does shun him, and flees away 
from him, not because he is averse to the world, but be- 
cause the mind of the world is averse to him. Men of the 
world may, perhaps, read the word of God, make or say 
prayers, and sing, and outwardly revere God, but still there 
always remains a wall between them and God. They never 
feel joyful and happy in God, are never really at ease in 
his presence, but always feel most free and easy when they 
can slip away from him, and forget him. For that reason 
they also never really understand those who are happy in 
God, but regard them as extravagant and fanatical, and 
believe that their lives must be very empty of joy, etc. In 
short, the heart of the world is estranged from and dead 
to God, averse to him; and this makes it unblest. Here, 
as we have said, a reconciliation must take place, a re- 
conciliation which brings man into an entirely different 
relation to God, if he is to become happy. But how, 
then, can such a reconciliation be brought about? Answer: 
By the removal of sin, and by the justification of man. 
That which separates must be removed. Otherwise there 
can be no reconciliation. But that which separates is 
sin. From this fact we understand why "the reconcilia- 
tion of the sinner to God" always depends on "the atone- 
ment of the sins,"* that is, on the removal of the sins. We 

* To show the force of the one Swedish word {forsona) for 
both "reconciliation" and "atonement," the two expressions in 
the text above might be translated in this way: " The atonement 
of the sinner unto God' always depends on 'the atonement of the 
sins/" But at least the former of these expressions is not good 
English, usage of language having decreed that it must be: "the 
reconciliation of the sinner to God." And to use the word "recon- 



MAN AND THE WORLD AS OBJECTS. 75 

repeat it again: By being cleansed from sin, the sinner 
comes into a right relation to God. In no other way can 
such a relation be brought about. 

77. Now let us consider all the passages in the New 
Testament which speak of man's reconciliation to God.* 
And may God give us grace carefully to attend to the 
words, and to fix it firmly in our hearts that the spirit of 
the Bible is nothing but what the words of the Bible tell 
us. If we, in the judgment of some, should appear to fall 
into repetitions while we endeavor to set forth these 
matters, we answer with Paul: "To write the same things 
to you, to me is not grievous [Rev. Vers.: "irksome"], but 
for you it is safe" (Phil. iii. i). And most certainly it 
gives the heart a wonderful sense of safety to see how 
the dear old word again and again and everywhere speaks 
and teaches the same thing. Now then, we will begin 
with 2 Cor. v. 17. 

78. "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: 
old things are passed away; behold, all things are become 
new." Thus saith the apostle. He and all the believers 

ciliation" in the latter of the above expressions would be still 
less allowable, so as to say: ''the reconciliation of sins." We 
must, therefore, in English, use the word "reconciliation" in the 
one instance, and "atonement" in the other, — as if the two words 
meant wholly different things, which in fact they do not, the 
only difference being in the objects, not in the acts or results 
themselves. See further the second note to § r <3 — J. G. P. 

* The expression, "to reconcile sinners to God/' does not 
occur in the Old Testament. There occur the expressions, "atone 
for "sins" "atone for sinners from [or, as to] their sins," and the 
like, meaning the same as "blot out [or, cleanse away] sins," 
* 'cleanse sinners from their sins, " etc. While, consequently, the Old 
Testament throughout considers the atonement, or the reconci- 
liation, from the view of blotting out sin, the New Testament 
considers the same from the view of the sinner again coming into 
a right relation to God. The one takes place through and si- 
multaneously with the other, but the latter says more than the 
former. The former is more negative, the latter more positive. 



76 THE RECONCILIATION. 

of his time were, consequently, new creatures, new men; 
their old manner of life in sin was ended, and a new mode 
of being had begun. Their entire relation to God, to the 
world, to sin, was different than before. And thus it was 
by their being "in Christ," he says. "In Christ" is an 
expression constantly recurring in Paul's letters. All that 
the Christians are, all they possess, do, and expect, etc., 
all — ail this the apostle refers to this center: Christ. 
Their peace, their life, their strength, their hope, their 
salvation — all depends on their being in Christ. But to 
be in Christ is to believe in him, for through faith the 
sinner yields himself to Christ, and becomes one with 
him. "But," the apostle adds, "all things are of God." 
It is he who is the source of all this blessed change. And 
in what way had God brought it about? Why, in this way 
— the apostle answers — that he has "reconciled us to 
himself by Jesus Christ." There you hear: only by the 
way and means of reconciliation had this great salvation 
come to them, to wit, that they had become reconciled to 
God, and had thus come into a right relation to him. And 
who had brought this about? Answer: God, the heavenly 
Father. And by, or through, what means? Answer: By, 
or through, Jesus Christ. Just think how plain and simple. 
It was not Christ, who had reconciled God to them, but 
it was God, who had reconciled them to himself by and 
through Christ. Now this is clearly the teaching of the 
apostle in this place. 

79. Suppose you had a friend who sinned against 
you, and thus became averse to you. Such things do, 
indeed, often happen among men. But suppose again 
that you still kept your good feelings towards him, and in 
some way finally succeeded in subduing him, so that he 
cordially returned to you, and all between you and him 
became right and good again. Then would it not be 
wrong to say that you had become reconciled to him? 
Certainly; on the contrary, it was you who had reconciled 



MAN AND THE WORLD AS OBJECTS. 77 

him to yourself. And one who should say that you had 
been reconciled, and that your wrath had been appeased, 
he would do you a great injustice, and speak worse of you 
than you deserved. Would it not be so? Well, then, learn 
also from the words of Paul how you are to understand a 
man's reconciliation to God. When God saw us fallen, 
and averse to him, then he instituted ways and means to 
reconcile us to himself. For this purpose he gave his Son, 
and by this Son we (believers) have now been reconciled, 
says the apostle, and have become entirely new creatures. 
But he who, on the contrary, says that God has been re- 
conciled, he speaks worse of God than he deserves. 

80. But when Paul says, "hath reconciled us," — 
whom does he really mean by "us"? Perhaps the whole 
world? By no means. Whom the apostle means by "us" 
he explains directly after, when he adds: "And hath given 
to us the ministry of reconciliation." Indeed this cannot 
be said of the whole world. Now, throughout this 
whole section of the epistle the apostle is speaking of his 
own position. "We are made manifest," he says, "unto 
God" and "in your consciences" (verse n); "we are not 
again commending ourselves unto you" (verse 12, Rev. 
Vers.); if "we be beside ourselves, it is to God" (verse 
13) "henceforth know we no man after the flesh" (verse 
16), etc. Hence, by the words "we" and "us" he means 
himself. But beyond this plain literal reference of the 
words, they can be applied to all such persons as stand in 
the same relation to Christ as the apostle did. They are 
all reconciled to God by Christ.* 

81. "Because"** — thus the apostle proceeds — 

* Incredibly great is the damage which has been done by and 
the confusion which has arisen from the belief that the apostles 
have meant the world when in their letters to believers they say 
"we", "us", "our", etc. When the apostles mean the world, 
then they say "the world". 

** All the Swedish Versions, as also German, French and 
some others that I have seen, have here in the beginning of verse 



78 THE RECONCILIATION. 

"God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself." 

In verse 18 the apostle had said that that which had taken 
place in and with him was all of God. To this some one 
might object, saying: "It was not of God, but of Qhrist, 
that this took place." But "no, no," the apostle would 
answer; "it is all of God, because it was God who was in 
Christ, engaged in reconciling the world unto himself." 
In order better to understand the connection of the 
apostle's words, we will use an illustration. If I say, 
"That I exist is of God, because it is God who has created 
all things," then I explain my own existence as derived 
from God by the fact that it is God who has created all 
things, and therefore me also. Likewise the apostle says 
in effect: "That we are reconciled to God is a work of 
God, for it was he who was in Christ, reconciling the 
world." The entire work of reconciliation is of God, who 
dwelt and worked in Christ, therefore it is he who through 
Christ has reconciled to himself every man who is recon- 
ciled. 

82. "The world," says the apostle, — "reconciling 
the world." The work of Christ, or the work of God in 
Christ, did not limit itself to a certain few previously elected 
ones, but extended itself to the whole world. All sorrow 
which simple souls cause themselves on the question as 
to whether, perchance, they belong to the elect or to the 
non elect, is entirely needless, yea, really hurtful, and 

19 a causal conjunction, — not as the English Authorized, and 
the Revised, which have "to wit", erroneously making what 
follows explanatory to the immediately preceding expression, 
"the ministry of reconciliation." But even if the "to wif and 
what follows could be, as it evidently should be, referred back 
to the expression in the beginning of verse 18 — "all things are 
of God" — verse 19 should not begin with "to wit, ' but with 
"because," "for," "inasmuch as," or the like, since plainly the 
apostle is giving in this verse the reason or ground for his pre 
ceding principal statement that "all things are of God." 

J. Q. P. 



MAN AND THE WORLD AS OBJECTS. 79 

causes not only unrest and spiritual weakness, but some- 
times even disorder of mind. Though from some passages 
in the Bible it might seem as if God had destined only 
certain ones to be saved, it is nevertheless always a false 
conception of such passages when they are interpreted or 
understood in evident conflict with the definite testimony 
of the Bible that the work of Christ holds good for all 
men. "God so loved the world/' — thus it testifies — 
"that he gave his Son." The word "world" does not 
mean a certain part of mankind, but all mankind, all men, 
without any exception. God wills the death of no sinner. 
Consequently he has manifested himself in Christ for the 
purpose of reconciling all to himself. What he has pre- 
determined is this, that whosoever believeth in the Son 
shall be saved. [See John iii. 15 — 17; xii. 47; 1 John iv. 
14; Acts ii. 21 ] Rom. x. 11 — 13]. There has never been 
found on earth so bitter an enemy of God, that God would 
not reconcile him to himself. Neither will ever such an 
one be found hereafter. 

83. This we ought not only to know as a good and 
true theological doctrine, but also be able to use it for the 
comfort and confirmation of ourselves and others. When 
sinners are awakened to a sense of their sins, it is, as we 
well know, very common for the devil so to terrify such 
souls, that they fear that God has given them over to a 
reprobate mind, so that it is impossible for them to be 
saved. "Too late! — too late!" — is the cry in their hearts. 
A confirmation of this they think they find in the fact that 
their pious endeavors (their self-righteous work!) have 
hitherto always been unsuccessful. They have resolved, 
they have wept and prayed and worked to make them- 
selves better, and they have thought that, if they could 
have succeeded, God would have been gracious to them. 
But since they have never succeeded really to become 
better — to become such as they wished to be, that is, satis- 
fled with themselves, — all their conflicts having ended in 



80 THE RECONCILIATION. 

overthrow or failure, — then they have begun to think this 
way, each for himself: "Now indeed it is clear that there is 
no hope for me. God has in anger shut up his tender mer- 
cies; to me he will be favourable no more." (Cf. Ps. 
Lxxvii. 7 — 9). Thus and more in the same strain thinks 
the distressed, wearied soul. At certain times it may 
happen that even those who long have lived in the faith 
of Jesus get into such darkness that they fear that God 
has altogether forsaken them. This we can see from the 
experiences of the saints as recorded in the Bible. Well, 
then, in the case of either the sinner or the saint, such 
passages as the one before us will be of right good service 
— to wit, such passages as those in which God says that 
his work in Christ pertains to all men, to the whole world. 
When every thing is light and joyous for the heart, then 
they may be or seem to be of less use, because then their 
teaching this appears so clearly. But when darkness comes 
on, then we realize their value. And if any one who reads 
this is now in such darkness, we would gladly shout these 
words, "the world", into the depths of his heart. Even 
though you may say, "I am the worst, the guiltiest, the 
most wretched person, that ever lived in the world," still 
you can never say, "I am so guilty and bad that I do not 
any more belong to the world." Nay, wherever you may 
go or whatever you may be, you certainly still belong to 
the world; and of the world Paul says: "God was in Christ, 
reconciling the world unto himself." You may be an 
apostate, or a backslider; if so, then you have fallen back 
into the world, and it was for the reconciliation of the 
world that God was manifested in Christ. Now, since 
God thus speaks, you ought to hearken to that word, and 
believe it, to the glory of God, and to your own comfort. 
84. "In Christ," says the apostle. God's entire 
work of salvation is, so to speak, comprehended in Christ. 
God has, indeed, also in other ways manifested himself. 
He has manifested himself in nature; he has specially 



MAN AND THE WORLD AS OBJECTS. 8 1 

manifested himself in the prophets, in the apostles, etc. 
But the Bible never says that God was in nature, or in 
the prophets, or in the apostles, reconciling the world. 
No; but in Christ — only in Christ, — he alone is the 
Mediator. It was already the Spirit of Christ that was in 
and worked in the prophets (i Pet. i. n). It was Christ 
who was in and worked in the apostles. It is Christ who is 
still, even to-day, working in and through the word, bap- 
tism, the Lord's supper, etc., for the reconciliation of sin- 
ners to God. In him God is summing up all things (Eph. i. 
10, Rev. Vers.); in him all fulness of the Godhead dwells, 
and by or in him God has created all things (Col. i. 16, 
19); in him and in none other, therefore, is there salva- 
tion (Acts iv. 12). No one can come to God, or be re- 
conciled to God, but by him. Such is the testimony of 
the Scriptures in the most unambiguous terms. 

85. But seeing it was God who was in Christ, re- 
conciling the world unto himself, you can in Christ see 
also a truly beautiful and lovely image of God. All, all 
the work of Christ — by his words as well as by his deeds 
— was directed towards the restoration of sinners from 
their sins, and towards bringing them back to God. You 
will never find, either in his words or in his works, a single 
thing wherein this does not plainly appear. Never will you 
find a single instance where he in any way seeks com- 
pensation or satisfaction for himself; but his entire life 
and work are given to sinners, in order to seek and save 
them, to arouse them to a consideration of their needs, to 
blot out their sins, to subdue their enmity, and to bring 
them again into a right and good relation to God. With 
this his heart was aglow, in spite of all their own bitter 
opposition. Well, then, consider now that it is God, the 
heavenly Father, you thus see in Christ, that it is he who 
does and works all this in Christ, for it is he who is in 
Christ, reconciling the world unto himself. Oh! how dear 
and precious to your heart you will find God to be when you 



82 THE RECONCILIATION. 

thus behold him in Christ. Because in Christ you have 
the true manifestation of him. 

86. But as the apostle says, "God was in Christ, 
reconciling the world unto himself," the question arises, if 
the matter itself of which the apostle speaks is to be un- 
derstood as being just this, that the whole world is now 
once for all reconciled unto God, or if the reconciliation 
is to be regarded as a work of God still going on. This is 
a very important question — is it not? May God guide us 
in his truth as we look into the Bible to find its answer. 

87. Is the world reconciled to God? We answer in 
the first place: Thus God nowhere speaks in his word. What 
I see in the Bible on that subject is this, that the work ot 
God in Christ was to reconcile the world, that the whole 
purpose of Christ's coming into the world, of his preach- 
ing, of his sufferings, death, resurrection, etc., was to re- 
concile the world unto God. But by this it is yet not 
said that the world now is reconciled.* If any one says 

* It is deeply to be regretted that the Lectors' Version of 
the New Testament [which Version, thus called, was made by 
certain learned men, "lectors", or professors, in a couple of higher 
institutions of learning at Stockholm, and published, first time 
in 1863, by the Evangelical Native-Land Association (Evangeliska 
Fosterlands-Stiftelsen, a Swedish home and foreign missionary 
association)], — a Version, on the whole so excellent and merit- 
orious, generally faithfully following the original text, — does 
however in certain points, as for instance just here in 2 Cor. v. 
19, altogether depart from the original, in order, self- authorita- 
tively, to put in something which Paul neither here nor any- 
where else has written. [The Author (P. W.) wrote this before 
Sept. 1831, as it was published then. In the previous editions of 
the Version referred to, the expression in question reads (being 
translated): lt For God reconciled in Christ the world unto him- 
self." Thus, alas! also the now authorized new Swedish Version 
renders the sentence. The tenth edition of the above-mention- 
ed Version ("the Lectors' Version''), published in 1882, and every 
edition since, has a foot-note to-that rendering, which note reads 
thus: "Or, For God icas in Christ, reconciling the world unto him- 
self." P. W. has since very truly said that that note ought to 



MAN AND THE WORLD AS OBJECTS. 8$ 

that the object of Christ's work was to make the world 
happy, and to bring it to heaven, then that is saying the 
truth. But if from this the inference be made, that the 
world now is happy and is in heaven, it would be utterly 
erroneous. "Well, but," you say, "Christ did however cry 
on the cross, "It is finished," and what was then finished, 
if not his work of reconciliation?" Answer: All that Christ, 
according to the prophecies, should fulfill here upon earth 
for the salvation of the world was then finished. That this 
was the meaning of his cry we can see from the context. 
For thus it reads: "That the Scripture might be fulfilled 
Jesus saith, T thirst'." Then they gave him vinegar, and 
when he had received the vinegar he said, "It is finished" 
(John xix. 28 — 30). Consequently, all that was written 
concerning him was now accomplished. But by this it is 
yet not at all said that the world is reconciled, saved, 
happy, etc. No; here it is not advisable to go beyond 
the plain words of Scripture. To say that the world is 
reconciled is just as foreign to the Bible as to say that it is 
saved and happy in God. There is not a single passage 
in the whole Bible where either the one or the other of 
such things is written. "God wi/leth that all men [i. e. the 
the world] should be saved" — that is written (i Tim. ii. 4, 
Rev. Vers.). When God sent his Son into the world, he 
did so with this object in view, that the world should be 
saved. Christ came, "finished the work which God had 
given him to do" on earth (John xvii. 4), suffered, died, 
and rose from the dead, all in order to save the world; 
but nevertheless the world is not yet saved. This we all 
understand very well; but precisely the same that holds 
true of the salvation of the world, holds true also of the 
reconciliation of the world. 



be raised to the dignity of text, while the translation in the text 
ought to be removed entirely. These observations on that par- 
ticular Swedish Version hold good also with reference to similar 
translations in other languages. — J. G. P.] 



84 THE RECONCILIATION. 

88. But not only this. The apostle has in our text 
a word which at once and expressly shows that the world 
is not reconciled. "God," he says, "was in Christ, re- 
conciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them 
their trespasses, and having committed unto us the word 
of reconciliation. Therefore . . . . we beseech you on 
behalf of Christ, be ye reconciled to God."* As he be- 
seeches the world to be reconciled to God, it proves that 
it is not reconciled. Let us here look at an example, or 
perhaps two examples. When Peter in Acts ii. 40 says 
to the Jews, "Save yourselves from this crooked genera- 
tion," then by these very words he announces that they 
were not saved. When he in Acts iii. 19 exhorts them, 
saying, "Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your 
sins may be blotted out," then again by these very words 
he announces that they were not converted, and that their 
sins were not blotted out. Likewise here, when Paul says 
to the world, "be ye reconciled to God," then by these 
very words this apostle announces that the world as not 
reconciled. Nothing can be clearer than this. 

89. But now some one may say: "The apostle is 
here speaking of a twofold reconciliation, one general, 
which has been made for the whole world, and one indi- 
vidual, which consists in this, that every individual person 
for and to himself appropriates or accepts the general re- 
conciliation."** Many of God's dear and upright children 

* Thus the parts of the verses referred to are rendered in 
the Revised Version, which here fully agrees with the Author's 
(P. W.*s) translation in Swedish. — J. G. P. 

** What in the above statement of the view in questfon is 
called "the general reconciliation/' is ju.<jt what by many Eng- 
lish and x^merican religious writers is called "the atonement", 
"the purchased redemption", or "the finished work of Christ", 
— also other terms or expressions are used for the same idea. 
The term "reconciliation" alone is applied by such writers to what 
above is called "individual reconciliation." In Scandinavian and 
German religious literature this "twofold" reconciliation is ex- 



MAN AND THE WORLD AS OBJECTS. 85 

hold such a view, and will here surely put it forward as 
an objection to what we have said before on this point. 
But this view, or objection, rests upon a great misappre- 
hension. Neither Paul nor any other apostle speaks any- 
where about any such twofold reconciliation. And that 
Paul does not so speak, especially in the text which we 
are considering, he himself makes apparent by his using 
the very same word in all the cases where he speaks of 
reconciliation. See here another example. If I say, 
"God was in Christ, saving the world, therefore we be- 
seech you on his behalf, be ye saved/' then by this nothing 
at all would be said of a twofold salvation. Everyone 
would by this understand that I besought the world to be 
saved, not on the ground that the world was saved, but 
on the ground that God had manifested himself in Christ 
for the purpose of saving the world. The relation between 
the different expressions is the same here. When the 
apostle says, "God was in Christ, reconciling the world 
unto himself, therefore we beseech you, be ye reconciled [or, 
allow yourselves to be reconciled'] to God," then he speaks 
about one and the same reconciliation. On the ground 
that God was in Christ manifested for the purpose of re- 
conciling them, he beseeches them to be reconciled (that 
is, to allow themselves to be reconciled). The Scriptures 
do not know of any reconciliation which consists in any- 
thing else than in this, that the individual sinners be recon- 
ciled to God. In reality the apostle says as much as this: 
"It was God, who was in Christ, and his work in Christ 
was to reconcile the world unta himself. We have been 
(that is, we have allowed ourselves to be) reconciled to 



pressed also by such terms as ''the objective and the subjective 
reconciliation" (or atonement) — on which more is said further 
on (see note to § 109). In English religious literature the two 
different, yet synonymous, words ("atonement" and "reconcilia- 
tion") have simplified the distinction, but at the same time car- 
ried it farther from the truth. — J. G. P. 



86 THE RECONCILIATION. 

him, and have from him received the ministry of recon- 
ciliation, through which we now cry to the world, that is, 
to all men: 'Be ye reconciled'." Thus it was in the case of 
the apostles, and in their days. In the same way it will 
continue unto the end of days. Every man who has 
been reconciled to God, has been reconciled by God. 
It is the work of God — through Christ. And the recon- 
ciled man also, in his turn, is ordained to beseech others: 
"Be ye reconciled unto God " And this, because the re- 
conciling work of God in Christ aimed at the reconcilia- 
tion of the whole world unto God, just as the apostle here 
says. 

90. We will understand this still more clearly if we 
consider what we have before said of the proper meaning 
of the word which the apostle here uses, and which in our 
Bible is translated by the word "reconcile." It properly 
means, "to bring some one into another relation, that is, 
into a right relation, to some one else." To be reconciled 
to God means, therefore, to be in, or stand in, a right rela- 
tion to God. But the world is not in such a relation. And 
that it does not stand in a right relation to God the word 
of God as well as all experience shows. What the apostle 
Paul says in Rom. i., that is still true of the world: that it 
is filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, covetous- 
ness, envy, murder, strife, deceit, etc.; but they who are 
such do not stand in a right relation to God. Conse- 
quently, what is necessary for man, if he is to be saved, is 
that he be again brought, or set, into a right relation to 
God. And it was this that God had in view when he sent 
his Son. Therefore, also, the gospel is now calling to the 
whole world: "Be ye reconciled to God," that is, suffer 
yourselves now to be brought into a right relation to 
God, suffer yourselves to be reconciled to him. More- 
over, wherever the gospel is preached we see many and 
again many who really become reconciled to God, and 
thus come into a right relation to him. And this always 



Man and the world as objects. 87 

happens by their coming to Christ, to whom the gospel 
attracts them, and in whom God dwells. "God was in 
Christ, reconciling the world unto himself." 

91. Let us here employ an illustration which Christ 
himself has used. When God by Moses lifted up the 
brazen serpent in the wilderness, then it was done for the 
healing of all who were bitten by the serpents. But, simply 
for that reason, or only with that object in view, no one 
could indeed have said as soon as the serpent had been 
lifted up: "Now all who have been bitten by the serpents 
are at once, and once for all, healed in and through this 
brazen serpent; therefore, now every one individually 
must for himself, by looking at the brazen serpent, appro- 
priate to himself this healing and thus become well." No; 
but rather did the announcement to the people (Num. 
xxi. 8) say as much as this: "This serpent of brass is 
lifted up for the healing of all; therefore we beseech you 
on behalf of God, be ye healed — that is, allow your- 
selves to be healed, or, be ye willing to be healed — by 
looking upon it." Was there at all any question of a 
twofold healing? No, indeed. Well, now it is just the 
same in this matter of reconciliation. Not that we can say: 
"In Christ all sinners are now once for all reconciled to 
God; this reconciliation they must now individually, each 
one for himself, appropriate by faith." Nay, nay; but thus 
we truly can say: "Christ is given by God to be the Sa- 
viour of the whole world (1 John iv. 14); he has died, has 
been buried, has risen from the dead, etc. — all, all, in 
order that he may reconcile the world to God; therefore 
come, all ye sinners, and be reconciled to God by sur- 
rendering yourselves to him. The true Physician is here 
at hand, in order to heal all the sick; therefore, ye sick 
ones, be ye healed, be ye willing, allow yourselves, to be 
healed by believing in him, etc." 

92. "But yet," says some one again, "in Rom. v. 
10 it does stand, 'When we were enemies, we were recon- 



88 , THE RECONCILIATION. 

ciled to God by the death of his Son/ and this shows in- 
deed — does it not? — that we were reconciled to God 
on the day when Christ died, and hence long before any 
of our believing, or before our conversion, yes, even long 
before we were born into the world." Well, of this we 
will speak in our next chapter. May God guide us in the 
light of his eternal truth. "The testimony of the Lord is 
sure, making wise the simple." (Ps. xix. 7). 



CHAPTER VI. 



Objects of the Reconciliation, or Atonement, continued, with 

Special Reference to the Time, Manner, and Means thereof, 

or, When and How Man is Reconciled to God. 

93. "When we were enemies, we were reconciled to 
God by the death of his Son" (Rom. v. 10). The question 
was raised at the close of the preceding chapter, if these 
words do not prove that the whole world, apart from all 
consideration of and every condition as to faith and re- 
pentance, was reconciled to God on the day when Christ 
died. And we promised to examine this point more closely 
in this chapter. In order rightly to understand the mean- 
ing of the apostle, we must pause at and carefully consider 
every word of what he here says. First, we notice the 
"we" of the apostle in the text. Who are then the "we" 
of whom he speaks? He himself shows whom he means 
when he goes on to say: "For if, while we were enemies, 
we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, 
much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by [or, 
in] his life; and not only so, but we also rejoice in God 
through our Lord Jesus Christ."* Concerning the same 

* Thus the Revised Version, which is here more like the 
Author's (P. W/s) own translation of the passage into Swedish. 

— j, a. p, , 



TIME, MANNER, AND MEANS. 89 

"we" he had previously written thus: "We have peace 
with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (verse i); "we 
rejoice in hope of the glory of God" (verse 2); "we glory 
in tribulation also" (verse 3); "the love of God is shed 
abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given 
unto us" (verse 5). Who, now, are these "we"? Are they 
the world? Can it be said of the world, that it has peace 
with God? that it has the Holy Ghost? that the love of 
God is shed abroad in its heart? that it shall be saved in 
the life of Christ? that it rejoices in God through the Lord 
Jesus Christ? Of course not. The apostle speaks of him- 
self and believers, not of the world. Therefore he says 
just as he means — "we," and not "the world": "We 
were reconciled to God by the death of his Son"; and 
then, "much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by 
[or, in] his life." 

94. "By the death of his Son," that is, of Christ, — 
that is the next expression of the apostle which we notice. 
Does not this mean, "the day when Christ died"? An- 
swer: It is not thus written. Neither dees the apostle 
ever say in any other place that we were reconciled to 
God on the day when Jesus died. "By the death of Je- 
sus" is never the same as "on the day when Jesus died." 
All who now are justified and righteous, the living and 
happy children of God, have become such by, or through, 
the death of Jesus; but this does not at all mean that they 
became such on the day when Jesus died. The apostle 
Peter, also, says to the Christians that they had been "be- 
gotten again unto a lively [i. e., a living] hope by the re- 
surrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Pet. i. 3); but 
this does not mean that they, without faith and repentance, 
had been born again on the day when Christ arose from 
the dead. Hence, when Paul says, "by the death of Je- 
sus," then he expresses — just as the words read — the 
means, but not the time, of their reconciliation, — how, 
not when, they were reconciled. And that means operates 



90 THE RECONCILIATION. 

continually, through the ages, to effect the reconciliation 
of sinners to God. 

95. "When we were enemies'' ["While we were ene- 
mies," Rev. Ver.], or, literally, "Being enemies," — the 
apostle says — "we were reconciled to God/' Does not 
this expression prove our reconciliation to have taken 
place prior to any our conversion or faith, since it took 
place while we yet were enemies? Answer: By no means. 
The apostle does not in his language really say, "We were 
reconciled," etc., but "we became reconciled to God at 
the time when we were enemies."* Hence, that is saying 
this much: "We were enemies at that time, hut we became 
reconciled, and this was effected by Christ's giving his life 

* As the English verb "to be" is used both as an auxiliary 
to form the passive of transitive verbs, and also as a predicate 
verb, by some grammarians called copula, the distinction be- 
tween the two different Swedish verbs here used by the Author 
— vara and varda, exactly like the German sein and werden — can- 
not well be expressed by exact corresponding words in English. 
The Author would certainly not like to lay himself open to the 
charge of making hair-splitting distinctions. The predicate in 
the sentence, "we were reconciled," etc., would in English 
hardly be understood otherwise than as a passive verb in the past 
tense. But in Swedish, with "noro" (past of "vara," to be) as a 
predicate- verb, or copula, and "forsonade" "reconciled," as a 
complement in the nature of a predicate-adjective, the meaning 
would be: 'At the time when we were enemies, i. e., unconvert- 
ed, we were already then reconciled, i. e., we were in a reconciled 
state, or condition, effected by the death of Christ/' — which 
would mean that at one and the same time we were both enemies 
to God and also friends (= reconciled) to him, — a doctrine,usu- 
ally called "the objective reconciliation" (or atonement), really 
held by some people. This the apostle cannot mean, since lie 
uses the passive katellagemen, which in Swedish is expressed by 
"vordo forsonade" '. Corresponding forms of "blifoa" ("become," 
"get") are frequently used instead of "varda" as being stronger 
than this simple passive auxiliary. In English the passive is, 
"were reconciled;" but in cases of doubt or ambiguity the strong- 
er verb "became" would be used instead of "were". In popular 
(vulgar?) phrase it would be said, "got reconciled." — J. G. P. 



TIME, MANNER, AND MEANS. 91 

for us." The apostle does not say that we continued to 
be enemies after we had been reconciled. No; rather 
this does he say: "That God so loved us, that he spared not 
his only begotten Son, but delivered him up, even unto 
death, for our salvation, — this was the great and unspeak- 
able grace that reconciled us to God, brought us into a 
different, yea, into a right relation to him, and made us 
his friends, who before had been his enemies/' He does 
not say that God was made our friend, because he had 
never been our enemy; no, but we, we who were enemies, 
we were, or became, reconciled to God. Just think what 
an enemy Paul himself had been. But he had been re- 
conciled to God. When and where? On the way to Da- 
mascus, at the very time when he was raging the worst in 
his enmity. And by what means had he been reconciled 
to God? By Jesus, having given his life for him, — that 
self-same Jesus whom he was persecuting. 

96. In order more easily to understand this point, 
we will again make use ot an illustration. If one who has 
been a drunkard says, "God had compassion on me, and 
regenerated me while, or at the time when, I still was in 
the degradation of drunkenness, and was an enemy to 
him," — now, would he by this mean that, before and 
without any his repentance and faith, he was a regenerated 
man while and at the same time as he was continuing in 
drunkenness? Certainly not. But this he means to say, 
that he was a drunkard, but at that time he was born again 
["became regenerated" — to use the manner of expression 
spoken of before as clearer, stronger, and not liable to be 
ambiguous], and thus ceased to be a drunkard. And lo, 
in the same manner the believers at Rome (as also all 
other believers) had been enemies to God, had lived with- 
out God, yea, had despised him, and had walked in and 
had had their pleasure in all kinds of sin. But now they 
were reconciled* to God, and this had taken place by the 

* Notice this expression, as illustrating what is said in the 



Q2 THE RECONCILIATION. 

death of his Son. Now they were enemies to him no 
longer. Now they were standing in a right and good re- 
lation to God. The believers of all ages can give the 
same testimony. Just think of yourself. Were you not an 
enemy to God? And did you not then become reconciled, 
so that you ceased to be his enemy, and instead became 
his friend? Why, certainly. And by what means? Just by 
Christ's having entered into death for you, which fact you 
learned from the gospel. Well, then you yourself have 
experienced what the apostle here is saying. What the 
apostle says he does not seize out of the wind, or merely 
fancy it; but he gathers it from such living realities as he 
and all believers then had experienced, and as others since, 
in all ages, have experienced. 

97. But we need not rely on illustrations. The apos- 
tle himself explains what kind of reconciliation he means. 
In verses 8 and 9 he says: "While we were yet sinners, 
Christ died for us; much more then, being now justified by 
[or, in] his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath through 
him. For," he adds in verse 10, "if we, being enemies, 
were [or, became] reconciled to God through the death 
of his Son, much more shall we, being reconciled, be saved 
in his life."* Note this connection: Formerly we were 
sinners, and then Christ died for us; now we are not sin- 
ners any more, but righteous, and therefore we shall be 
saved through him from the wrath to come. Formerly we 
were enemies, and then we became reconciled through 

preceding note. Here "toere reconciled" is logically not in the 
passive voice, winch would give the sense that they now, just 
at that time, became reconciled; but this is not what the Author 
here wants to say. But "were" is here the predicate-verb (or 
copula), and "reconciled" is the complement with the force of 
an adjective, giving the meaning, "Now they were in a recon- 
ciled state, or condition," which is saying as much as and even 
more than, "Now they had been reconciled.'' — J. G. P. 

* Verse 10 (of Rom. v.) thus literally rendered and con- 
structed, following the Author's (P. W.'s) Swedish. — J. G. P. 



TIME, MANNER, AND MEANS. 93 

his death; now we are not enemies any longer, but are re- 
conciled, and therefore friends, hence we shall much more 
be saved in his life. Consequently, Paul here puts in op- 
position the two conditions: to be an enemy and to be 
reconciled. He who is an enemy is not reconciled; he 
who is reconciled is not an enemy. Hence, to be recon- 
ciled is the same as to have become a friend after having 
been an enemy. Over against this the apostle puts to- 
gether, on the one hand, sinner and enemy, and, on the 
other hand, to be justified and to be reconciled. To be a 
sinner, or to be in sin, is to be an enemy; to be justified 
from sin is to be reconciled and brought into a right rela- 
tion to God. Just think what a glorious connection. By 
falling into sin man has come into a wrong relation to 
God, has become his enemy; by being [i. e., becoming] 
justified from sin man comes into a right relation to him, 
is reconciled to him. Now, compare with this the sacri- 
fices of the Old Testament, and you will see how the same 
beautiful line of scarlet thread runs through both the Old 
and the New Testament. Because, as we have already 
seen, the sacrifices were designed, in a typical way, to 
blot out sins, and thus to cleanse and sanctify sinners 
from their sins, which is just the way to bring them again 
into a right relation to God, that is, to reconcile them to 
him, — just as Paul here teaches. Praise be to God for 
his unspeakable gift and grace. 

98. Hence, the principal lessons to be gathered 
from Rom. v. 10, regarding the reconciliation, may be most 
briefly summed up as follows: (i.) all men are by nature 
enemies of God, because they are carnally minded; (2.) 
the entire work of God in reconciliation does therefore 
tend to this, that he may by it reconcile enemies to him- 
self; (3.) consequently, all who have ever become recon- 
ciled have become so as enemies, that is, at the time 
when they were enemies, or in a state and condition of 
enmity to God. But we will proceed further, in order to 



94 THE RECONCILIATION. 

see how the apostle in other places speaks of the re- 
conciliation. 

99. In Ephesians ii. 14 — 16 the apostle says:* 
"Christ is our peace, who has made both [i. e., peoples, 
Jews and Gentiles] one, and has taken away the partition 
wall of separation [i. e., the wall which was designed to 
keep us, Jews and Gentiles, apart, and which actually did, 
in heart and mind, separate us], to toit, the enmity, having 
in his flesh annulled the law of commandments in ordinan- 
ces; in order that he might in himself create of the two 
[men, or kinds of men, Jews and Gentiles] one new man, 
making peace, and reconcile them both in one body unto 
God through the cross, having slain the enmity in himself." 
Here the apostle is speaking again ol the reconciliation 
of sinners to God. He has in the nearest preceding verses 
shown how the Christians at Ephesus had been Gentiles, 
separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth 
of Israel, strangers from the covenants of the promise, and 
far from God, but how they now in Christ were brought 
nigh in the blood of Christ. They had now — they too 
— become the people of God, although by nature they 
were Gentiles. "For," the apostle then adds, "he, Christ, 
is our peace." As much as to say: "The former state of 
enmity, which existed between the Jews and the Gentiles, 
had its foundation in the ordinances, or statutes, of the 
Old Testament, which formed a kind ol separating parti- 
tion wall. But this state has now ceased, and you Gen- 
tiles are now partakers of the same grace as we Jews, for 
Christ has made an end of the entire Old Covenant with 
its ordinances; and this he has done, in order that he might 
make Jews and Gentiles to be one with each other, and 
create them as one new man in himself." By the Gen- 
tile's being in Christ he has ceased to be a Gentile, and 
by the Jew's being in Christ he has ceased to be a Jew. 

* I translate quite literally the Author's own rendering in 
the text. — /. G. P. 



TIME, MANNER, AND MEANS. 95 

Both of them have become something else, something 
new; namely, they have become Christians, and are now 
one in Christ. "And," the apostle adds, "Christ has done 
this, further, in order that he might reconcile them both in 
one body unto God through the cross/' There he presents, 
as the great principal aim of the work of Christ, the re- 
conciliation of all to God — the reconciliation both of 
the Jews and of the Gentiles. But that they are to be re- 
conciled to God "in one body," this means that they were 
regarded and are to be regarded simply as one people [e. i., 
as constituting one mass of humanity, all alike having 
need of and being objects of the same reconciliation], 
and as such are to be brought into a right relation to God. 
The means for doing this is the cross, as the apostle says, 
that is, the fact that Christ has sacrificed his life on the 
cross for both Jews and Gentiles. It is this great act of 
salvation, which, on the one hand, is to "slay the enmity" 
between Jew and Gentile, and, on the other hand, is to 
"reconcile them both to God." 

100. In Colossians i. 19 and 20 the apostle says: "For 
it has pleased God that all the fulness should dwell in him 
[Christ] , and that he should through him reconcile all things 
into himself, making peace through the blood of his cross; 
through him reconcile all things whether upon the earth or 
in the heavens."* As we see, the apostle is also in this 
passage speaking of reconciliation to God, and his words 
go much further than in the former passage. In the first 
place, he sets forth our whole salvation, or reconciliation, 
as grounded, ultimately, in the good pleasure of God. It 
did not please God to deal with us according to our sins, 
to cast us off and destroy us, but it pleased him, on the 
contrary, to sacrifice everything, in order to reconcile us 
to himself. It passes all human understanding, that God 
is so good; but what is now to be done about it? Such 

* The verses are here translated in accordance with the 
Author's Swedish rendering in the text. — J. G. P, 



g6 THE RECONCILIATION. 

was the good pleasure of God, and there it stands; you 
cannot get around it. If the devil contradicts it, if my 
own feelings rise up against it and try to picture God dif- 
ferently — well, what of that? The devil is a liar, and my 
own feelings are erratic. But the word of the Lord abideth 
forever. All that our heart feels and thinks in opposition 
to this word only testifies how far, by nature, our heart 
has got from the true knowledge of God. "Consequently, 
it pleased God to reconcile us to himself. It was we that 
needed to be reconciled to him, and it was he that took 
measures to accomplish it. 

101. Secondly, the apostle teaches us here that for 
this reason it has pleased God that in Christ all the fulness 
should dwell. By this fulness the apostle means the entire 
fulness, abundance and riches, of devine grace. Of the 
same thing John the evangelist speaks when he says: "We 
beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the 
Father, full of grace and truth" (Joh. i. 14, 16). Hence, 
in order that he might reconcile us to himself, it pleased 
God to let the full riches of all — not a part, but of all 
— his grace dwell in Christ. A lesser person than the 
only begotten Son was not sufficient for the great work; 
and with anything less than all the fulness of God's grace 
it could not be accomplished. Therefore it pleased God 
to send just him, and fill him with all this fulness. Hence 
it happens that Christ everywhere in the Gospels ascribes 
to the Father all that he is and does and speaks. Hence, 
also, it happens that he says: "He that hath seen me hath 
seen the Father;" "He that believeth on me, believeth not 
on me, but on him [i. e., the Father] that sent me," etc. 
It was, then, all the fulness, all the abundance, of all the 
grace of the Father, which dwelt in him and worked in 
him for the reconciliation of sinners to God. And if the 
ultimate motive for all this be sought, it is to be found in 
God — in the good pleasure of God. "God is love" — 
there the whole history of our salvation begins. 



TIME, MANNER, AND MEANS. 97 

102. Further, the apostle gives us, by his very mode 
of expression, a good understanding of what he means by 
the word "reconcile". For he says that it was God's 
good pleasure "to reconcile all things unto [literally, 
"into"'] himself." Thus, he here uses a different expression 
than elsewhere used. In other places he says, literally, "re- 
concile with God"; here, however, "reconcile into God."* 
But what is it to reconcile anyone into God? Answer: It is 
to bring such a one into a right and good relation to God, 
and just in this consists the essence of reconciliation. 
This the apostle plainly expresses when for the sake of 
explanation he adds: "Making peace through the blood of 
his cross." To bring sinners into a true relation of peace 
with God is, therefore, "'to reconcile into God." But who 
is it that is here held up as "making peace" and as "re- 
conciling all things to himself"? Answer: It is God him- 
self. And through what means? Answer: Through the 
blood of Jesus. There was no need of making peace in 
God [that is, in the heart and mind of God, — no need 
of making him peaceably disposed], because there was 
no enmity in him. But in us was enmity, therefore we 



* In the following N. T. passages the verb "reconcile" is (in 
Greek) connected with a dative, hence without* a preposition: Mat 
v. 24; Rom v. 10, 2 Cor. v. 18 and 19; Eph ii 16. This con- 
struction is in Swedish uniformly rendered by "med" ("with", 
like the German "mif) — "reconcile anyone with anyone." But 
in English "to" or "unto" is used. The passage (Col. i. 20) un- 
der consideration in the text above is in Greek quite peculiar: 
having the verb "reconcile" connected with a preposition (eis s 
into) followed by an accusative. This is expressed in Swedish 
by the prep. "till" (German "zu"), but the English will not ad- 
mit of any other preposition than "to" or "unto", which is 
quite proper here where there is an underlying idea of spiritual 
or mental motion to, toward, or into connection icith, God. As 
"to" has also the weaker sense of a dative connective — uniting 
the remoter object with the verb — it becomes, in fact, aquival- 
ent also to the Greek dative and the Swedish prep, "jned" (Ger- 
man "mit"). — J. G. P. 



gS THE RECONCILIATION. 

needed to be brought, through the blood, into a relation 
of peace with God — made peaceably disposed toward 
him. And to do this, that was the work of God. For the 
accomplishment of this work it pleased him to have all 
the fulness of his grace dwell in Christ, and to send him 
into humiliation, suffering, and death. For he so loved 
the world. Oh, what a God! All — "all things are of 
God," we have already heard the apostle say in 2 Cor. v. 
18, — all is of God through Christ. God is the source, 
the author; Christ is the mediator; and the blood is the 

means. 

103. But the meaning becomes still clearer when 

the apostle in v. 21 et seq. (of Col. i.) adds: "And yon, being 
in time past alienated and enemies in your mind in your evil 
works, yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his fiesh 
through death, to present you holy and without blemish and 
unreproveable before him: if so be that ye continue in the 
faith, grounded and stedfast, and not moved away from the 
hope of the gospel." — After the apostle had set forth the 
great main object in the sending of Christ — to wit, to recon- 
cile the world to God — he goes on to say that thte object 
was realized in the case of the believers to whom he was 
writing, inasmuch as they had been [had become] recon- 
ciled to God. The apostle is speaking here just as he does 
in 2 Cor. v.: to wit, he first presents the object of God's 
work in Christ as being the reconciliation of the whole 
world, and then shows that this object is attained accord- 
ing as men become reconciled, or allow themselves to be 
reconciled. And to those who had thus become recon- 
ciled the believers in Colosse now belonged. But he who 
had reconciled them was God, as he says: "And* you hath 

* The Author (P. W.), as does also the now authorized 
Swedish new Version, translates the apostle's "kai" by "even", 
or "also," which seems more forceable in contradistinction to 
the "all things" in the beginning of verse 20. The translation 
of the verses, as quoted above, is from the Revised Version 
(English). — J. G. P. 



TIME, MANNER, AND MEANS. 99 

he (God) now reconciled." But what the apostle meant 
by this, that they now were reconciled, we can see from 
his expressions about the opposite state; he says: "Ye were 
in time past alienated and enemies in [or, by] your mind 
in your evil works, yst [or, buf] now hath he (God) recon- 
ciled you." Not to be reconciled is therefore the same 
as to be alienated from God, to have one's affections 
withdrawn from him, and to be in heart and mind an en- 
emy to him; and such the Colossians had been in time 
past, as was then manifested by the evil works, or doings, 
in which they were engaged. On the other hand, to be 
reconciled is to have come nigh unto God, to stand in a 
right relation to him, and to be his friend; and such the 
Colossians were now since they had learned to know Jesus, 
and had been united to him. Hence, according to the 
teaching of Paul in this passage, the reconciliation of a 
sinner to God consists in this, that from having lived in 
sin and having been an enemy of God he becomes right- 
eous and enters into a true relation of peace with God. 
Nothing can be clearer and more simple than this con- 
nection of the apostle's words. But as to the means he 
says: "Through death" — "God has reconciled you in the 
body of Christ's flesh through death," that is, by his hav- 
ing given into death for you the body of his only begotten 
Son. This great fact, of which they had received knowl- 
edge through the gospel, was that which had drawn their 
hearts to God, had wholly conquered their enmity, and had 
made them the children and the friends of God. And 
then the apostle adds, in effect, that if they continued in 
the faith, they could expect sometime to stand holy and 
perfect before God in heaven — all through the work of 
the same God, and through the same Mediator, Jesus. 

104. But the apostle has yet in this text a word that 
is calculated to shed a most wonderful light on the mystery 
of the reconciliation. He says, namely, that God would 
reconcile to himself not only that which is on the earth, 



IOO THE RECONCILIATION. 

that is, humanity, mankind, the world of man, but also 
that which is in the heavens, that is, the angelic host, the 
world of angels. That, now, in his expression about the 
angelic world, he does not include the evil angels, we 
understand at once from his words, "in the heavens." 
The evil spirit world is not in the heavens. Hence, what 
God was concerned to do in Christ, was to reconcile 
also the heavenly angel world unto himself. But what 
does this mean, that God would reconcile the good angels? 
Well, we understand, first of all, without even saying it, 
that it does not mean that God would appease his wrath 
against the good angels. Why, what an altogether un- 
biblical doctrine that would be! But what, then, does it 
mean? Answer: It means just what the words say, to wit, 
that God would in Christ bring into a right relation to 
himself not only the world of human beings, but also the 
heavenly world of angels. In Eph. ii. the apostle has 
spoken of the Jews and Gentiles, who had been separated 
from one another, as united in one, and reconciled to God. 
Here he ascends higher, and speaks of men and angels, 
who had been separated from one another, as reunited 
into an harmonious whole, and thus reconciled to God. 

105. But are the angels sinful? or have they in any 
other way come into a wrong relation to God? Answer: 
The angels are not sinful, but through man's sin a disturb- 
ance has been occasioned even in their relation to God. 
Originally the world of humanity and the world of angels 
belonged together as one whole where the perfect hap- 
piness, in God, of the one was not possible but in con- 
nection with that of the other. Together they formed, so 
to speak, one body with many members. Therefore, ■ 
the fall of man had an influence not only on his own re- 
lation to God, but also on the relation of the entire spirit 
world, which thus was disturbed. Behold here an illustra- 
tion. When an important member ol the body is badly 
hurt, then all the other members of that body feel it. 



TIME, MANNER, AND MEANS. 101 

None of these other members can then feel perfectly 
well. Through the injured member they all suffer more or 
less hinderance, although each one by itself is not hurt. 
Therefore they are all concerned that the sick member 
be healed. Something similar happened when man fell 
into sin. The fall had a hindering and disturbing effect, 
not only upon man himself, and not only upon that nature 
which surrounded him the nearest and which was stricken 
with a curse, but also upon the entire heavenly spirit 
world. Hence, in the cause of man's restoration, not only 
his own recovery is concerned, nor is it a matter that 
concerns only the removal of the curse under which the 
earth is sighing on account of man's sin, but that cause 
comprehends also the removal from yonder world of 
heavenly spirits and from its relation to God every dis- 
turbing element and condition, the existence of which 
was caused by the fall. Wherein this disturbance really 
consists it is not possible for us to know, but that a dis- 
turbance has been occasioned we can understand, and 
the apostle teaches it here. When, therefore, the heav- 
enly spirits are so earnestly concerned about man's sal- 
vation, they are concerned about a matter that touches 
also their own position, their own complete happiness, 
which has been obstructed by the dislocation of a member 
in the great body to which they belonged. Just think 
what a wonderful look the apostle permits us, by these 
his words, to cast into the mysteries of the spirit world. 
But still more: just think what an insight he gives us into 
the mysteries of the reconciliation when he presents that 
subject to us from this point of view — to wit, that, by 
the blotting out of man's sin, the world of good angels 
and the world of redeemed humanity are to be restored, 
as a united and indivisible whole, to a right relation to 
God, in order that they may be able to enjoy his perfect 
blessedness. 

1 06. Now, this being really the full significance of 



102 THE RECONCILIATION. 

the reconciliation, we easily understand why the Bible 
nowhere speaks of the reconciling of God. We thus un- 
derstand, also, why the Bible neither ever says that the 
world already is reconciled. It does not say so because 
the world is not now already in such a relation to God. 
The Reconciler has been given; in his life and work, in 
his death, resurrection, and ascension, and in his being 
clothed with all power in heaven and on earth, the con- 
ditions are given for the reconciliation of the world. 
And now the message is going out to the world: "Be ye 
reconciled to God." Not this is the gospel message of 
reconciliation: "God is now on his part reconciled to 
you; be ye, also, now reconciled to him." No; neither is 
it this: "The whole world has once for all been recon- 
ciled to God; receive ye now, therefore, this reconcilia- 
tion, and be ye reconciled to God." No, no; but this is 
the gospel message of reconciliation: "God is love, and 
he has sent his only begotten Son to reconcile you to 
himself; therefore now accept him, the Son, the Recon- 
ciler, and be ye reconciled, that is, allow yourselves to be 
reconciled, to God." O dear Lord, how simple and how 
beautiful is not the truth of thy gospel! 

107. "Yes, but," — thus some one will again object, 
— "looking at it in this way, the reconciliation seems to 
be brought about not by the death of Christ, as the apostle 
says, but by faith." Answer: This objection rests on a 
gross misunderstanding. If I inquire after the means 
which God has used and is using for the reconciling of 
man to himself, the answer will be, as the apostle teaches: 
Christ, the giving of the only begotten Son into death for 
sinners. Again, if I ask, in what way man is [i. e., becomes] 
reconciled to God, then the answer will be: In this way, to 
wit, that he accepts Christ Behold here an illustration. 
If some one has been very sick, but by an efficacious rem- 
edy has been healed, then he can say: "By this remedy 
God has healed me." But if I then ask him, "How did it 



TIME, MANNER, AND MEANS. I03 

happen? In what way was it done?" he would answer: 
"Why, in this way, to wit, by my taking in the remedy." 

When the Israelites had been bitten by the serpents in the 
wilderness, then God healed them by [or, through] the 
brazen serpent. Hence, the brazen serpent was the 
means. But if I ask, "In what way were they healed by 
the brazen serpent?" the answer is: "In this way, to wit, 
they looked upon the brazen serpent." Now, the case is 
really the same here: He who brings about, or effects, 
the reconciliation is God, the heavenly Father; the means 
is the giving of the life of the only begotten Son; the 
manner, or the way, is faith whereby a sinner is united to 
the Son, the Christ who was delivered up unto death, and 
through him he is cleansed from sin, led back to God, 
and united with him. Therefore, in the Bible, never any 
others are called or said to be "reconciled" than those 
who have accepted Christ, and have allowed themselves 
really to be reconciled to God. All others are still un- 
reconciled, but yet they are objects of God's ever con- 
tinuing work of reconciliation in Christ. For this work 
aims at the reconciliation of the whole world. 

108. But now we go further. In Rom. xi. 15 the 
apostle uses a very remarkable expression about the re- 
conciliation when he says: "If the casting away of them 
[». e., the Jews] is a reconciliation of the world, what shall 
the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?"* Now, 
what can this be? Does it not sound strangely that the 
casting away of the Jews should be a reconciliation of the 
world? Well, let us see. The apostle contrasts the Jews 

* Literally translated from the Author's (P. W.'s) Swedish 
rendering in the text. Both the English A. V. and the Rev. Y. 
are nearly like this, only that they both needlessly render the 
plain noun {katallage — the same as in Rom. v. 11, 2 Cor. v. 18, 
19) by the participial form "reconciling" instead of "reconcilia- 
tion." In the Greek this noun is here without the article, the 
absence of which corresponds, in English, to the indefinite ar- 
ticle a or an. — J. G. P t 



104 THE RECONCILIATION. 

and the world. From this circumstance we understand 
that by "the world" he means the Gentile world. Then 
the apostle expresses it as a fact that the casting away of 
the Jews had now become a reconciliation of the Gentiles. 
How had that happened? The Saviour shows it in several 
passages. In the parable of the Great Supper (Luk. xiv.) 
he teaches that when they who were bidden, that is, the 
Jews, made excuses and would not come, then they were 
rejected, and the invitation was sent to the Gentiles in- 
stead. In the same manner he speaks in the parable of 
the Marriage Feast (Mat. xxii.). Precisely the same he 
sets forth in the parable of the Vineyard (Mat. xxi.). When 
the householder finally sent his son to the husbandmen 
to receive his fruits, they took the son, and cast him forth 
out of the vineyard, and killed him. Then the householder 
was angry with those husbandmen, destroyed them, and 
let out the vineyard to others. And this the Lord applies 
to the Jews, saying: "Therefore say I unto you, The king- 
dom of God shall be taken away from you, and shall be 
given to a nation [that is, Gentiles] bringing forth the fruits 
thereof" (verse 43). See also Acts xiii. 46; xxviii. 28. 
Hence, if we ask what it means that the casting away of 
the Jews became a reconciliation of the world, we obtain 
this answer: The message of salvation came in this way 
to the Gentiles so that they learned to know Christ the 
Saviour, received him as such, and thus were reconciled to 
God through him. "By the fall of the Jews," says the 
apostle in verse n (of Rom. xi.), "salvation is come unto 
the Gentiles." Nothing can be plainer, therefore, than 
that the apostle, by the word "reconciliation," means that 
change which consists in a sinner's coming into a right 
and good relation to God. 

109. The same word the apostle uses in Rom. v. 11 
where, after having spoken of the reconciliation effected 
in his own case and in that of his fellow-believers (com- 
pare our remarks in §§ 93 — 98), he says: "We also rejoice 



TIME, MANNER, AND MEANS. 105 

in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we 
have now received the reconciliation."* Who, then, — ac- 
cording to the words of the apostle, — who has or who 
have received the reconciliation? Has God? Nay; "we 
have received the reconciliation," he says. And of whom? 
Of God, for it is in him the apostle rejoices. And through 
whom? "Through Christ." But who, then, are these "we"? 
Does that word include the whole word? Nay; the apostle 
is here speaking not about the world, but about believers 
and justified persons, as we have seen before (§ 93, cf. § 
80). He says: "We have now received the reconcilia- 
tion." There is emphasis on the word "now," — -by which 
the apostle says as much as this: "Formerly we were 
enemies, but now, praise be to God, we have received the 
reconciliation." Behold again an illustration. All Isra- 
elites who were bitten by the serpents in the wilderness 
received the brazen serpent as a healing remedy, but 
health, or the healing itself, through that remedy, only such 
received as looked upon the serpent according to the word 
of God. Thus also here: The whole world has received 
Christ from God to be its Reconciler, but the reconciliation 
with God through him only they receive who accept him. 
But to "receive the reconciliation" is the same as to be 



* Revised Version. As observed in the note on pages 5— 8, 
this is the only place in the New Testament where the Authorized 
Version has the word "atonement," and that, too, as the render- 
ing of a word (katallage) which it everywhere else translates by 
"reconciliation" or "reconciling." If the word "atonement," 
which so frequently occurs in the Old Testament, meant there 
and in the New Testament what many theological writters have 
expressed by such words and phrases as "expiation," ''propiti- 
ating God," "appeasing the wrath of God," "satisfying the 
justice of God," "paying man's penalty of sin," etc., etc., then 
it is passing p trange that nowhere in the N. T. — no, not in a 
single place — is that word "atonement" used (meaning what it 
is thus supposed to mean), nor any other word or expression 
having just that supposed meaning. Could not the N. T. writers 



Io6 THE RECONCILIATION. 

reconciled, just as to "receive health" is the same as to 
be healed.* As long as the sinner rejects Christ he remains, 
in his enmity, without possession of the reconciliation. 

no. In order to understand more clearly still what 
the apostle means by reconciliation, we may cite also the 
passage where he uses the same word about mutual 
relations between human beings. In i Cor. vii. n the 
apostle orders that a woman who has parted from her 
husband remain unmarried o* else "be reconciled to hen 
husband." But now, what does this mean? Nothing else 
than that she should return to her husband, and enter upon 
a true marriage relation to him. So much the more must 
this be the duty of the woman if the husband on his part 
had used all means to reconcile her to himself. Just think 
how plain and illustrative this is. Thus through sin we 
have become alienated from our true God and husband, 
and now it devolves upon us to become reconciled to him, 
and to come again into a right and good relation of peace 
with him; and this we ought to do all the more as he, 
in his unchangeable love, has done and sacrificed every- 
thing, in order to bring about such a reconciliation. 

in. Concerning reconciliation between men, also 
Christ uses the same word in Mat. v. 24 where he says: 
"If thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest 
that thy brother hath ought against thee; leave there thy 
gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to 
thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift" — Now, 

say what they meant, or did they not dare to, or was is not ne- 
cessary? — J. G. P. 

* When some try to make out something which they call 
"an objective reconciliation" (or atonement), which is said to 
consist in this, that the world, but not the individual, has been re- 
conciled to God, then they try to make out something which is 
not only unscriptural but also self -contradict oiy. Why, the 
world consists of individuals. Hence, if I take away or except 
the individuals, what then is the world which is said to be re- 
conciled? Of course nothing. 



TIME, MANNER, AND MEANS. 107 

what does it mean for any one to be reconciled to his 
brother? Does it mean to pacify, to appease, or conciliate, 
his brother? Not at all. Because it may be so that the 
brother does not need to be appeased, or conciliated; it 
may be that his mind and loving relation have not at all 
been disturbed. But still it is necessary for him who has 
wronged him to go and be reconciled to him. He must 
then not think this way, and thus answer the Lord: "My 
brother does not need to be reconciled." No; the Lord 
did not say: "Go, and reconcile thy brother." But this 
he said, "Go, and be thou reconciled to thy brother."* 
And it still remains for him to be reconciled, even if the 
brother does not need to be reconciled. On the other 
hand, it certainly may be that the brother is so bitterly 
hostile that he cannot at all be appeased, or conciliated. 
This then would be to the other a constant hinderance to 
his offering, in case the Saviour had spoken of appeasing 
the brother or effecting his conciliation. But no. There- 
fore you need not think this way: "My brother will not 
be reconciled, and hence I can never go and offer my 
gift." Nay, not so. Why, the Lord did not say, "Go, 
and reconcile thy brother, and then come and offer thy 
gift," but, "Go, be thou reconciled to thy brother," and 
that can be done even though thy brother will not be re- 
conciled to thee. What the Saviour means is, therefore, 
the same here as in other places — just what he says and 
nothing else: "Thou, who hast wronged thy brother, thou 
must go to him, confess thy sin and ask his forgiveness, 
and in this way be reconciled to him, so that thou mayst 
come into a right relation to him again. How he then 

* In Swedish (as also in German) the verb is reflexive, "re- 
concile thyself/' which makes the expression clearer and stronger. 
The reflexive use of the verb does indeed occur in English, but 
with a somewhat different sense — that of to submit, to make 
content, etc., as "reconcile yourself to your afflictions or sur- 
roundings." But here the meaning is rather: to be kindly 
affectioned, to be friendly disposed, etc. — J. G. P 



108 THE RECONCILIATION. 

feels toward thee, that is not thy business; that is his 
own affair before God. If he be still hostilely disposed, 
it will not be any hinderance to thy offering thy gift on 
the altar. Nay, on the contrary it is then he who will be 
met by this command: 'Do not come with thy offerings 
before the altar, because thou standest in a wrong relation 
to thy brother. Go thy way, and first be reconciled to 
thy brother. Until this is done, God will not receive any 
gift from thy hands'." Consequently, from this passage 
we gain a new confirmation of what the Bible means by 
reconciliation, and then, again, by this we understand 
what it is to be reconciled to God. 

112. "Well, yes; but" — thus at last some will say 
— "is not this to take the very heart out of the gospel? 
If the world is not reconciled, what then shall I believe, 
what then have I to live on, and die by?" — We know it: 
many honest and well-meaning souls will thus question. 
But to all such questionings we answer: "To let stand 
what God in his word says, and to abide by it, that is not 
to take away the gospel nor any part of it. That which is 
written, that is the right and true doctrine, which will 
suffice and hold both to live on, and to die by. Yea, it is 
vastly more safe to live and die by what God says than 
by what he does not say. Only dare boldly to commit 
yourself to his word. But his word does not give you a 
reconciliation to believe in, but it gives you a Reconciler, 
a living person, the Son of God, in whom you can believe, 
upon whom you can rely with full confidence of heart, 
and to whom you can wholly surrender yourself. Believe 
therefore in him, and then you are reconciled to God, and 
can live happy and die blessed. Not this, "the world is 
reconciled," but this, "Jesus is mine," shall be your faith's 
joyous claim of salvation in life, and your heart's sweet 
rest when, somewhere and sometime, you drop down 
ready to breathe forth your last sighs on earth. 



MINISTRY AND MOTIVES. IO9 



CHAPTER VII. 

"Be ye Reconciled to God," or, The Ministry and Motives of 
Reconciliation. 

113. "We are ambassadors therefore on behalf of 
Christ, as though God were intreating by us: we beseech 
you on behalf of Christ, be ye reconciled to God" (2 Cor. 
v. 20*). In the preceding verses the apostle had set forth 

* Revised Version, which is here (as indeed also in most 
other places) more nearly like the Author's (P. W.'s) Swedish 
rendering in the text. The R. V. unwarrantably puts the pro- 
noun "you" in one place, — the A. V. has it twice in the verse. 
But the apostle is speaking in general terms, not to Christians, 
who as such of course had already become reconciled. By the 
R. Y. the Greek preposition "7iuper" (literally, over, for) is in 
both places where it occurs in the verse translated, " on behalf of " 
which is a great improvement over the inconsistent renderings 
in the A. V., which has first "for Christ," and then "in Christ's 
stead." But, as commentators generally agree to say, "an am- 
bassador speaks on behalf of, not instead of, the court which 
accredits him." As will be seen in the next paragraph (§ 114), 
P. W. translates "huper" by "for the sake of" ("for Christ's 
sake"), which harmonizes best with its meaning throughout the 
New Testament, especially here in this chapter (2 Cor. v.), which 
by many has been supposed to teach substitution pure and 
simple. The last clause of verse 15, however, upsets that theory 
completely; for there the connection of the words (in Greek) is 
such that it cannot, by any manner or means, be construed so 
as to mean any thing else than that Christ rose again as well as 
died for us, that is, for our sakes, not in our stead. What an 
absurd doctrine it would be to teach that he arose instead of 
men, saints and sinners, the unborn as well as the dead, so that 
they would never need to arise from the state of death! But 
there the apostle puts the death and the resurrection of Christ 
in exactly an equal relation to man. The Greek clause would 
in English literally run thus: "unto the for (huper) them having 
died and arisen," i. e., unto the one who for them died and arose, 
There are two participles immediately connected by an ' and" 
(kai) and preceded by the definite article common to both; and 



I IO THE 'RECONCILIATION. 

that it was God who dwelt and worked in Christ, and 
that his work in Christ aimed at the reconciliation of the 
whole world to himself. Every man's reconciliation to 
God is therelore a work of God himself through Christ 
(verse 18). After the apostle himself had been reconciled, 
he had from the same God received "the word of recon- 
ciliation" (verse 19). And now he was an ambassador of 
God for the sake of Christ. An ambassador has nothing 
else to do than to deliver the words of his sender to him 
whom they concern. His business is not to think out 
something of his own, but simply with faithfulness to set 
forth the words of the sender. Nor is it his business to 
defend or explain the words of the sender, but only cor- 
rectly to present them. Now, such was the position of 
the apostles in their relation to God. They were not to 
think out anything of their own, any new doctrine, or 
theology, to give to the people; but they were only to 
deliver to all peoples, both to Jews and to Gentiles, plainly 
and artlessly the word of God — not to explain or main- 
tain it, but only to proclaim it. It is this that gives their 
preaching such an extraordinary weight. Had they spoken 
out of their own notions we could say to them: "Who are 
you, that we should hear you?" But now they can answer: 
"It is not we, who speak, but it is God." It was God who 
through his Spirit gave them all that they should speak. 
Therefore Paul could say to the Christians at Thessaloni- 
ca: "When ye received from us the word of the message, 
even the word of God, ye accepted it not as the word of 
men, but, as it is in truth, the word of God, which also 
worketh in you that believe." (iThess. ii. 13. English 
Revised Version). 

between that mutual article and the participles is placed the 
phrase "for them" (Jiuper auton), which could not be placed any- 
where else, in order unmistakably to mark it as belonging to both 
the participles alike. If any other meaning had been intended, 
the apostle certainly could, would and must have used a different 
construction. — J. G. P, 



MINISTRY AND MOTIVES. Ill 

T14. But the apostle's saying, "We are ambassadors 
for the sake of Christ," that was not saying merely as much 
as, "in Christ's stead," but it is saying vastly more. Imagine 
a king sending an ambassador to a foreign court to pro- 
cure for his son a bride. Then that ambassador can say 
that he is the king's ambassador for the sake of the king's 
son, for his errand pertains to a matter of great impor- 
tance to the king's son. When the aged Abraham sent 
his faithful servant Eliezer to his native country, in order 
to procure a wife for Isaac (Gen. xxiv.), then Eliezer was 
Abraham's ambassador for the sake of Isaac. Lo, similar 
is the case also here. The apostle was the ambassador 
of God for the sake of Christ: his embassy concerned 
Christ, the cause of Christ, the kingdom of Christ, the 
glory of Christ, the presenting of a bride to Christ (2 Cor. 
xi. 2). When the apostle preached the gospel he did not 
merely look upon the misery of men in their sins, or upon 
their need of salvation, but still more — - in the very first 
place — upon the cause of Christ The real motive power in 
his missionary activity was not so much this thought, "It 
is demanded for the salvation of lost men, which is the chief 
matter concerned," but rather this thought, "It is de- 
manded for the glory of the name of Christ, which is 
chiefly concerned, — to wit, that he may be honored, that his 
kingdom may be extended until all things, according to 
the promise of God, shall be put in subjection under his 
feet." (Cf. 1 Cor. xv. 24—28; Heb. ii. 8). The first of 
these motive thoughts is, indeed, good; it can also mightily 
excite the feelings, and thus spur on the believer to ac- 
tivity. But it cannot give him the true steadfastness and 
perseverance, nor the true power of victory. If, on the 
contrary, his heart is filled with this great thought, that 
his work concerns the glorification of the name of Christ 
and the extension of his dominion, then this will give him 
the right kind of power and persistence to devote him- 
self to the work, and to sacrifice all, yea, to go through 



112 THE RECONCILIATION. 

fire and water, if need be, in order to lay all men at his, 
Jesus', feet. 

115. In a similar strain the apostle expresses him- 
self in Rom. i. 5 where he says that through Christ he had 
"received grace and apostleship, unto obedience of faith 
among all the nations, for his name's sake/' that is, for the 
purpose of glorifying his name.* Here we see again the 
great principal object on which his eyes were fixed first 
and last, to wit: to glorify the name of Jesus by subduing 
the nations (Gentiles, heathen) to him in the obedience of 
faith. Most certainly the Gentiles' own salvation was an 
important matter also to the heart of the apostle; but the 
highest aim it was not. That highest aim was the glori- 
fication of Christ, as we have just said. This way of 
regarding the work of missions is now somewhat uncom- 
mon. But of this we will have occasion to speak some 
other time. Meanwhile we understand from this what it 
means that the apostle was God's ambassador "for the 
sake of Christ." 

116. "As God is intreating by us," the apostle adds (2 
Cor. v. 20). Again he affirms that it was not he himself, but 
God, who was entreating. Since God has sacrificed his only 
begotten Son, in order to reconcile the world to himself, 

* Thus it is seen that the Author (P. W.) takes the apostle's 
expression, ' 'for his name's sake" — literally, "for his name" 
("liuper," over, or, for) — in connection with the nearer phrase, 
"unto obedience of faith," not in connection with the remoter 
clause, "through whom we received grace and apostleship," as 
the punctuation both in the R. V. and in the A. V. would indi- 
cate the meaning to be. That the apostle does not mean to say 
that he and others had received grace and apostleship "for Ms 
(Christ's) name's sake" — whatever such a phrase might mean — 
is plain from his introductory phrase, "through whom"; for what 
sense would there be in saying, in connection with the very same 
phrase and idea, first, "through whom," and then soon after, "for 
his name's sake"? Taken in direct connection with "obedience 
of faith," the phrase, "for his name's sake," is full of grand and 
glorious meaning. — J, G. P, 



MINISTRY AND MOTIVES. 113 

he now by his ambassadors entreats, that is, invites, prays, 
exhorts, the world to allow itself to be reconciled to him, 
and not to continue in its enmity. And yet he has not 
become weary, but age after age he is, through the gospel, 
reaching out his entreating hands to sinners. Oh, what 
a God! Can this be the God of whom we, by nature, are 
so afraid? — afraid of him, as if he would do us some evil? 
Yes, just he is the one. God entreats, prays, — mark and 
hear again: God is begging and entreating you, "Be re- 
conciled to me." Have you the hardihood to resist? 

117. During the last war between Russia and Turkey 
all institutions of charity in Russia were ordered, without 
remuneration, to receive and care for wounded soldiers. 
Against this order the superintendent of a very large in- 
stitution protested, on a certain occasion, on the ground 
that the officially approved regulations of the institution 
forbade his complying with the order. When the emperor 
had received information of this circumstance he himself 
visited the institution. The superintendent, as commanded, 
showed him all the rooms; but when the emperor told 
him he wished him to receive wounded soldiers he an- 
swered humbly, but decidedly, that it was impossible. 
"But if I, in a very nice manner, pray you to do so?" said the 
emperor. That word touched the heart of the superinten- 
dent; he began to shed tears, and declared that, whatever 
might happen, he could not resist his emperor's prayer. 
This may serve us for a comparison. Perhaps you have 
never yet from your heart prayed to God, but he stoops 
to you and condescends to pray and entreat you. Just 
think: God prays, entreats, implores you to open your 
heart and receive him, in order that he may make you 
happy. Can you resist that entreaty? Have you the hardi- 
ness to do so? That heart most be of stone which can 
say "No" to such a prayer. 

118. "We beseech for Christ's sake." Thus also the 
apostle prays, because he is of one mind with God. He 



114 THE RECONCILIATION. 

does not threaten and storm, but he prays and beseeches.* 
And whom does he beseech? He beseeches the world, the 
entire ungodly mass of humanity that is still lying dead in 
trespasses and sins, that it might become willing to be re- 
conciled to God. He beseeches you — you who still are 
living without God in the world. He beseeches on behalf 
of God, for it is God who has given him the commission, 
the embassy. And he beseeches for Christ's sake. He 
repeats here the expression, "for Christ's sake," or "for 
the sake of Christ." Not merely for your own sake, but 
for Christ's sake, he beseeches you. As if he would say: 
"It is not only your own salvation that is concerned, but 
also the fulfillment of those promises which the Father 
has given to his only begotten Son, that he shall have the 
nations for his inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the 
earth for his possession" (Ps. ii. 8). Nothing can be more 
effectively moving than this. Just think how everything 
is accumulating to the point of penetrating and stirring 
up the depths of your heart: — the glory of Christ is con- 
cerned, — your- own salvation is concerned, — God en- 
treats and Paul beseeches, "Be reconciled." — And you 
— what are you doing? Have you still the hardihood and 
power to say, "No"? Is there not something stirring in 



* The Versions have, indeed, two different words to corre- 
spond to the different ones in the Greek original (parakaleo, used 
about God, and deomai, predicate of the "we" in the text). But 
the word to correspond to parakaleo should not be "beseech," as 
the A. Y. has it, and then the weaker "pray" to correspond to 
the much stronger Greek deomai, which primarily means, "I am 
in need," then "I pray, beseech, implore," etc. The apostle's 
choice of words is highly and beautifully appropriate: the first 
(parakaleo) meaning literally, "I call near to myself," then "I call 
upon, invite, exhort, persuade, beg, entreat," implying "great 
urgency, usually enforced by adducing reasons or arguments;" 
the second {deomai), used only about man's praying, should then 
have a corresponding stronger and humbler word like beseech, 
implore, supplicate. — J. G. P. 



MINISTRY AND MOTIVES. 115 

your heart that inclines you to say, "Yes"? Do you dare 
to suppress it? 

119. This concern on the part of God to have sin- 
ners reconciled to himself appears everywhere in the Bible. 
In Isaiah lxv. i he says: '7 am inquired of by them that ask 
not for me; I am found of them that seek me not; unto a 
nation that hath not called upon my name I said: Lo, I am 
here! Lo, I am here!"* If the Lord, to some one who had 
cried after him, had given the answer, "Lo, I am here!" 
why, already that would have been a great favor; because 
if he were to deal with us according to our deserts, he would 
never notice us at all, nor care for our cry. But now in 
his mercy he not only goes so far as to listen to our cries, — 
nay, that does not satisfy him, for he says: "Before they 
call, I will answer; and while they are yet speakings I 
will hear" (Is. lxv. 24). But he does not let the matter 
stop even at this point, — his graciousness goes still further. 
To such as do not even call upon him he says: "Lo, I 
am here! Lo, I am here!" It is just as if he would say: 
"Perhaps you do not know that I am present, seeing that 
you say nothing. But I am here. If you want anything, 
let me know it. Because I have no pleasure in your death, 
but in your salvation." Can you imagine anything kinder 
than this? And this of the great and righteous God, of 
whom the whole world thinks in its heart that he is se- 
cretly evil-disposed toward it. When Paul in his epistle to 
the Romans cites these words of the prophet he says: 
"Isaiah is very bold, and saith, T was found of them that 
sought me not'" (Romx. 20). As if he would say: "It 



* I quote the words with the meaning given in the Revised 
Version; but as the verbs, "am inquired of" and "am found," are 
put in the present tense, I let "ask" and "seek" have the same 
tense, as is the case in the Hebrew. The construction of the last 
clause, and the exclamation, il Lo y I am here," I give according to 
the Swedish rendering by the Author (P. W.), who generally 
follows the Swedish New Proof-Translation. — J". Q. P. 



Il6 THE RECONCILIATION. 

was very bold on the part of Isaiah to place himself, by 
his preaching, so squarely against all men's natural 
thoughts about God; but yet he did venture to take the bold 
step." Yea, how could he have dared to have avoided it? 
Was he not — he, Isaiah, too — an ambassador of God? 
Well, then, it was his duty to announce the word of his 
Lord honestly and correctly 

1 20. But here it might stop. Is not this enough? 
Oh, no! However great this seems to be, the Lord is still 
greater. One is ready to ask: In what, then, can that be 
possible? Why, just listen. In direct connection with the 
previously quoted words (in Is. lxv.) the Lord continues: 
"/ have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious 
people, which walketh in a way that is not good, after their 
own thoughts; a people that provoketh me to my face con- 
tinually." (Revised Version). — Now, listen to that: 
Not only to care for such as did not call upon his name, 
because, perchance, they did not know anything of him, 
nor had thought of him, — not only to care for such did 
he condescend; nay, that was not all; but he condescended 
to care even for those who were -'a disobedient and gain- 
saying people" (Rom. x. 21), implying that they knew of 
him and had heard his voice, but spoke against him and 
provoked him "before his face," that is, by serving idols 
(having other gods before his face, as the expression is in 
Ex. xx. 3, literally). Unto such he did spread out his 
hands, and that not only once or twice; nay, all the day 
he continued to spread them forth, in order to receive in 
his arms the erring ones who, perhaps, yet in the eleventh 
hour would consider, return, and be reconciled to him. 
What do you think of such grace? Can you still hard- 
heartedly bear this thought, this picture, of your God — 
of him who has created you, of him who has sacrificed 
his only begotten Son for you — standing with his hands 
spread out all the day to you, entreating yon to let him 
save you? Can you know this, and still feel safe in sin? 



MINISTRY AND MOTIVES. 1 1 7 

121. Let us relate a story, a true narrative of real 
events. There was a Swedish workman who lived without 
God. On the estate where he was working, many of his 
comrades became converted, and this circumstance trou- 
bled him. At last he could not endure it, but left his po- 
sition and moved away. But in the new place where he 
obtained employment, it was "no better." There also he 
met Christians who "troubled" him. Then finally he de- 
cided to leave that place, too, and go to America. He 
started. When he landed in the new world, there was a 
countryman of his, who met him, and asked him whence 
he came and whither he intended to go. He told him. 
But then the other man said: "It was not so much that I 
meant; my question was rather concerning your soul, 
whether you have ever thought about whence by sin you 
have fallen, and where at last you will land." This was 
too much for our man; he saw that it was God seeking 
him, and with overflowing emotions he cried out: "Lord 
God, is it then impossible to avoid coming in contact with 
thee, since thou art even here meeting me and art stretch- 
ing out thy hands after me?" This was a stubborn man, 
a gainsaying man, but the Lord pursued him and attacked 
him by his grace, so that he finally was obliged to sur- 
render. What do you say of such a God? If he now en- 
treats you also, will you still be determined to remain in 
sin and in the world? Will you still not allow his grace to 
overwhelm you? 

122. The prophet Joel (in chap. ii. 12 and 13), after 
having proclaimed the drawing nigh of a punitive judge- 
ment of the Lord, sets forth the following words of the 
Lord:* "Yet even now, saith the LORD, turn ye unto me with 
all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with 
mourning: and rend your heart, and not your garments, and 
turn unto the LORD your God: for he is gracious and full of 

* All the following quotations of Old Testament passages 
are from the Revised Version. — J. 0. P. 



Il8 THE RECONCILIATION. 

compassion, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy, and re- 
penteth him of the evil" [changes his threats of punish- 
ments, on the conditions before named]. And in Isaiah 
xlv 21 and 22 the Lord says: "There is no God else be- 
side me; a just God and a Saviour; there is none beside me. 
Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: 
for 1 am God, and there is none else." In Ezekiel xxxiii. 
11 we read: "As I live, saiih the Lord GOD, I have no plea- 
sure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn 
from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; 
for why will ye die, house of Israel?" Ah, dear soul! 
why should you want to die when the Lord wants you to 
live? Now, now is an acceptable time, now is the day of 
salvation; make use of the opportunity, for another day 
is coming when it will be too late. Every step you take 
brings you nearer eternity. You are just now, perhaps, 
taking the last steps; "yet even now," says the Lord, "turn 
unto me, for I am gracious, full of compassion, slow to 
anger, and plenteous in mercy." Have you lived without 
God forty, fifty, eighty years or more, — "yet even now" 
hearken to his voice, and turn to him. His invitation is 
not limited to any particular age. No one is too young, 
and no one is too old. Neither is his invitation limited 
to any certain class. No one is too high, no one too low, 
no one too little a sinner, no one too great a sinner. Who- 
ever you may be — in the eyes of God you are too precious 
to die and perish. Therefore, turn and be reconciled to 
God, and you will be saved. Thus God entreats and im- 
plores, and he wants an answer — an answer to-day, an 
answer from you. O say, what answer will you give him? 
Have you the heart to answer, "No"? 



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